Accelerating the Thermal Transient Testing by a Novel Temperature Sensitive Parameter Calibration Method based on I-V Characteristic Measurement

Thermal characterisation of each large power module or assembly is inevitable in the industry. Thermal transient testing provides not only generic thermal parameters but also the root causes of potential failures. The major bottleneck in this process is the long time needed for the calibration of a thermally sensitive parameter of the semiconductor devices, opposed to the actual measurement time which is a few tens of seconds. The article presents a methodology which replaces the lengthy measurement of a parameter at many temperatures by a complete current-voltage sweep fulfilled below a second and some calculations based on semiconductor physics. The method also may predict the high temperature behaviour of wide band gap semiconductor components, needed for lifetime estimation.