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Thermal component model for electrothermal analysis of IGBT module systems

Article  in  IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging · September 2001

DOI: 10.1109/6040.938309 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ADVANCED PACKAGING, VOL. 24, NO. 3, AUGUST 2001
Thermal Component Model for Electrothermal
Analysis of IGBT Module Systems
Chan-Su Yun, Paolo Malberti, Mauro Ciappa, and Wolfgang Fichtner, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—The insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) mod-
ules are getting more accepted and increasingly used in power
electronic systems as high power and high voltage switching
components. However, IGBT technology with high speed and
greater packaging density leads to higher power densities on
the chips and increases higher operating temperatures. These
operating temperatures in turn lead to an increase of the failure
rate and a reduction of the reliability. In this paper, the static and
dynamic thermal behavior of IGBT module system mounted on a
water-cooled heat sink is analyzed. Although three-dimensional
finite element method (3-D FEM) delivers very accurate results,
its usage is limited by an imposed computation time in arbitrary
load cycles. Therefore, an RC Component Model (RCCM) is
investigated to extract thermal resistances and time constants for a
thermal network. The uniqueness of the RCCM is an introduction
of the time constants based on the Elmore delay, which represents
the propagation delay of the heat flux through the physical
geometry of each layer. The dynamic behavior predicted by the
thermal network is equivalent to numerical solutions of the 3-D
FEM. The RCCM quickly offers insight into the physical layers of
the components and provides useful information in a few minutes
for the arbitrary or periodic power waveforms. This approach
enables a system designer to couple the thermal prediction with a
circuit simulator to analyze the electrothermal behavior of IGBT
module system, simultaneously.
Index Terms—Electrothermal simulation, elmore delay model,
finite element method, IGBT module, package, RC component
model (RCCM), thermal analysis, thermal network.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE trend in power electronics continues toward greater
packaging density, speed and high power dissipation. This
technology trend resulted in increased operating temperatures,
which have in turn lead to an increase of the failure rate and
a reduction of the reliability [1]. Thus, thermal simulations are
playing an essential role in the design of high power systems
such as vehicles, ships, space crafts, etc.
There are few approaches to analyze thermal temperatures of
the IGBT module systems [2]–[4]. This is due to the limitations
of computational time and the available computer memory for
fine meshes. In order to solve these problems, a conjugate heat
transfer has been used to predict the module temperature and the
water velocity of a heat sink, respectively. It is possible to solve
system level dynamics by calculating the water velocity of a heat
sink with a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulator. The
Manuscript received May 25, 2000; revised March 20, 2001.
The authors are with the Integrated Systems Laboratory, Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland (e-mail: csyun@iis.ee.
ethz.ch; malberti@iis.ee.ethz.ch; ciappa@iis.ee.ethz.ch; fw@iis.ee.ethz.ch).
Publisher Item Identifier S 1521-3323(01)06028-2.
1521–3323/01$10.00 ©2001 IEEE
401
results of the CFD are applied to the heat conduction simulator
as boundary conditions.
In this paper, the static and dynamic thermal behavior of the
IGBT module system, which is mounted on the water-cooled
heat sink is simulated and discussed. The simulation results are
also compared with the measurements. Although the numerical
simulation delivers very accurate results, its usage is limited by
an imposed computation time in arbitrary load cycles. There-
fore, an RC component model (RCCM) has been investigated
to extract thermal resistances and time constants for a thermal
network. The uniqueness of the RCCM is an introduction of the
Elmore delay [14], represents the propagation delay of heat flux
at each component layer. The RCCM quickly offers insight into
the physical layers of the components. Arbitrary power wave-
forms are specified through a circuit simulator and the related
electrothermal characteristics are derived by using the thermal
component model.
II. THERMAL ANALYSIS OF THE TOTAL SYSTEM
Fig. 1 shows a schematic structure of the total system, which
consists of the IGBT module and the cooling system. To analyze
the thermal performance of the total system, the 1200 A, 3.3
kV IGBT module, which has six subassemblies on the common
base plate, is mounted on the heat sink [15]. The heat sink is
cooled by forced water convection through micro channels. A
measured flow rate of 400 l h corresponds to a heat transfer co-
efficient of 0.6 W m K that is also calculated by using the CFD
simulator [18]. The thermal grease between the IGBT module
and the heat sink is assumed to have a thickness of 0.1 mm . A
thermal conductivity of the grease is assumed to be 0.8 W mK.
One subassembly structure of the IGBT module on the heat sink
is modeled and simulated using the three-dimensional finite el-
ement method (3-D FEM) by means of SOLIDIS-ise [16] and
Ansys 5.4 [17] to take advantage of the system symmetry. A
fine mesh is used for chips and the surrounding area of the sub-
assembly to increase analysis accuracy. A relatively coarse mesh
is used in other area of the heat sink to speed up the calculation
time. The thermal grease between the IGBT module and the heat
sink is represented with high aspect ratio elements. The final op-
timum mesh has 44 008 elements and 11 445 node points.
The power applied to the IGBT devices is 223.57 W and the
bottom temperature of the heat sink is fixed to be 11.9 C. These
initial boundary conditions are equal to the measured condi-
tions. The maximum temperature on the chip surface is calcu-
lated to be 34.2 C with 223.57 W power dissipation as shown
in Fig. 2(a). The computed value is quite close to the experi-
mental value of 36.2 measured by infrared (IR) thermog-
raphy using a constant emissivity of 0.86. Fig. 2(b) shows that
402
Fig. 1. Schematic structure of the total system including the IGBT module and the water-cooled heat sink: (a) IGBT module has six subassemblies, (b) heat sink
is cooled by forced water convection through the microchannels, and (c) optimum mesh is used across the total system for the 3-D FEM simulation.
Fig. 2. Measured and simulated temperature rises. Reference temperature
of 11.9 C is measured and used in the 3-D FEM: (a) thermal images on the
chip surface with 223.57 W power dissipation, (b) static, and (c) dynamic
temperature rises for different power ranges.
the experimental junction-to-ambient thermal resistance
of 97 K kW is in very good agreement with the 3-D FEM result
of 99 K kW under the same load conditions. Fig. 2(c) shows a
comparison of 3-D FEM results with electrical measurements
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ADVANCED PACKAGING, VOL. 24, NO. 3, AUGUST 2001
[18]. In here the transient heating curve, , is transformed
from the measured cooling curve as follows:
(1)
where is the measured cooling curve. Conversion of
cooling data, or vice versa, can be accomplished through (1).
The maximum junction temperature rise of the 3-D FEM agrees
well with the electrical measurements for different power levels
such as 88.2, 129.7, and 184.8 W . This agreement confirms
that the thermal parameters are reasonably used in the 3-D
FEM simulation. In particular, the thermal conductivity of the
grease and the heat transfer coefficient of water channel are
estimated appropriately.
III. THERMAL NETWORK MODEL AND ELECTRO-THERMAL
ANALYSIS
In spite of the fact that the 3-D FEM simulation delivers very
accurate results, its usage in the case of an arbitrary load profile
(like it is encountered in a locomotive) is limited by the imposed
computation time. Therefore, accurate and computationally ef-
ficient thermal network models are of great importance to re-
duce the design-cycle time of locomotive systems. In the liter-
ature, many papers about thermal and electrical network model
have been proposed [5]–[12]. These are based on the numerical
analysis of deconvolution and multiexponential fitting to cal-
culate the time constants in frequency and time domains. These
models, however, are often containing more complex mathemat-
ical functions, which do not offer such intuitive insight and still
obscure treatments to get time constant spectrums. In this paper,
an RC component model is investigated to extract thermal time
YUN et al.: THERMAL COMPONENT MODEL
Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the RCCM using the Elmore delay.
constants for a thermal network. The uniqueness of the RCCM is
an introduction of time constant based on the Elmore delay [14],
which represents the propagation delay of the heat flux through
each layer in the total system. The RCCM gives useful informa-
tion in a few minutes for the arbitrary or periodic power wave-
forms [15]. An implemented algorithm to extract the thermal
resistances and capacitances for the RCCM is sketched out in
Fig. 3. With temperature profiles of the 3-D FEM results at var-
ious internal positions, the resistances and capacitances are cal-
culated for the thermal network. They are as follows.
1) The calculation of the thermal resistance and capacitance
for each component layer can be performed by starting
from the total thermal impedance of the solid structure in
their proper order, following the heat flux. Total thermal
impedance from the heat source to the bottom case can be
defined as
(2)
403
where
thermal component resistance;
thermal component impedance;
dynamic component response function;
transient temperature response in the component ,
and .
At various internal positions of the structure, the transient
temperature responses of can be calculated using the
3-D FEM results with constant power dissipation .
2) To get the component impedance, temperature profiles of
the 3-D FEM are handled as follows:
(3)
3) In the component layer , a dynamic response function
is used to extract the propagation delay time of
heat flux. It is related to the flying time of heat flux pass
through the components of solid structure. It is also a
function of thermal resistance and capacitance as follows:
(4)
4) The Elmore delay is introduced into the dynamic response
function for calculating the propagation delay time
of heat flux from the heat source to this element
component. Elmore introduced the calculation of to
the layer that depends on and in a simpler way than
the threshold time constant. More generally, the Elmore
delay formula gives good estimates if the interconnect
lines are the RC or overdamped interconnects [13]. The
propagation delay time of heat flux in layer can be de-
fined as
(5)
5) The time constants of elementary components are calcu-
lated with propagation delay times. This expression of
is just the area above the dynamic response func-
tion of , but below 1.0. Physical meaning of the
propagation delay time of actually corresponds to
the 63.2% threshold temperature of its steady state with
step power dissipation. It is reasonable, therefore, to de-
fine the time constant as the flying time of heat flux
coming from the preceding components. In other words
(6)
where, , .
6) The thermal capacitances of component layers are
obtained using the time constants and the sum of the
thermal resistances. From the electrical point of view,
current flowing across the capacitor during the transient
time is the same on both sides of the device. It is due to
the symmetrical variation of the positive and negative
electric charges. However, there are no quantities corre-
sponding to the negative electric charge in the thermal
network. Only the heat flux flowing to one side of the
capacitor has a real meaning and must be considered
for calculating the thermal capacitance [11]. Since the
maximum temperature gradient would occur within the
component layer, the transient impedance can be
404 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ADVANCED PACKAGING, VOL. 24, NO. 3, AUGUST 2001

Fig. 4. Extracted RC component model and its comparison with the 3-D FEM and the RCCM. (a) Equivalent thermal network of the total system. (b) A comparison
of the dynamic thermal responses using a constant power of 100 W. (c) Frequency effect of the applied power (P = 147:64 W).

treated as during the propagation delay time of heat

flux . The thermal capacitance of certain component
layer can be defined with the time constant and the sum
of the resistances. It corresponds to the heat flux flowing
up to the isothermal bottom case as follows:

(7)

Fig. 4(a) shows the extracted thermal network from the 3-D
FEM results using a constant power of 100 W . Although the
total system is built with ten component layers, only seven layers
are shown in the thermal network. Where the materials have rel-
atively high conductivity or the material layers are sufficiently
thin, it is possible to represent these layers as a lumped single
node. The top plate, silicon and the solder layers are combined
as the first node (Silicon node). The last node (Heatsink node)
contains both the thermal grease and the heat sink. Other mate-
rial components are represented by each RC pair and correspond
to physical locations of the total system.
A comparison of the thermal impedance using the RCCM
and the 3-D FEM is given in Fig. 4(b). It shows that the tran-
sient thermal responses of both models are in good agreement.
Fig. 5. Electrothermal model in Saber. Thermal power is calculated from
It confirms that the transient responses of every physical layer the electronic system part by P = I 1 V and used in the thermal part,
are described accurately by the RC components. In each com- simultaneously.
ponent, the accuracy of the derived temperature responses using
the RCCM is defined as percentage error sponses of each RC pair does not exceed 13% along the whole
time steps. The average error over all components is calculated
(8) to be about 8%. It can be noticed that seven elementary com-
ponents of the total system are enough to guarantee the thermal
where is the number of time steps and is the reference tem- network model. As well as the accurate results the RCCM ap-
perature. In fact, by comparing the results of the 3-D FEM and proach uses significantly less CPU times than the conventional
the RCCM, the maximum percentage error in the transient re- 3-D FEM approaches.
YUN et al.: THERMAL COMPONENT MODEL
Fig. 6. Electro and thermal characteristics during short circuit operations: (a) turn-off waveforms of a 2200 A, 2200 V, (b) turn-on waveforms of a 1200 A 1650
V IGBT module, (c) thermal power dissipation, and (d) temperature responses for each waveform.
Fig. 4(c) shows the corresponding temperature responses
of the total system due to the periodic, square wave power of
147.64 W with 0–30 Hz frequencies. An average power of
147.64 W is determined by multiplying measured A perature in the circuit simulator.
and V. In this entirely periodic operation,
temperature oscillates at the power turn-on and turn-off time,
respectively. According to the frequency increase, the junc-
tion-to-ambient temperature rise approaches a mean
temperature of 7.3 C, which agrees well with the measure-
ments and the RCCM results. Even at a 10 Hz frequency,
is reduced about 40% compared to the static case Hz .
At frequency of 30 Hz that is nominal operating frequency,
is only 1 C above the mean temperature. Therefore, the
calculation of the mean temperature is critically important in
the design of the IGBT module system.
The extracted thermal part of the total system is coupled with
an electronic system part in the circuit simulator Saber [19] as
shown in Fig. 5. During the switching of the electronic system,
an electric power is calculated by and converted to
thermal power for calculating the temperature rises in the IGBT
module system, simultaneously. Fig. 6 shows the electrical and
thermal characteristics of turn-off and turn-on waveforms in the
IGBT module [20]. These voltage and current variations can be
determined either from the data sheet of the device or from mea-
surements. At the turn-off, the peak power dissipation of 5 MW
occurs after 2 s and the is simulated to be 31 K. At the
turn-on, the peak power of 2.2 MW is reached after 3 s and
is calculated to be 11 K. With this electrothermal anal-
ysis, a circuit engineer may easily estimate a junction temper-
ature and an electronic behavior of the total system. They can
get the predicted voltage and current waveforms from the data
405
sheet or the measurements. The electronic power multiplied by
voltage and current can then be loaded as thermal power and
incorporated into the thermal model to predict the junction tem-
As a result, if the train parameters such as speed of train, traction
power, motor and converter currents can be measured on the real
traction systems, corresponding junction temperatures could be
principally predicted by using the electrothermal analysis.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
A method to analyze the IGBT module system is introduced.
The 3-D FEM is used to predict the thermal characteristics of
the IGBT module mounted on the water-cooled heat sink. the
IR and electrical measurements could be performed to verify the
simulation results of the 3-D FEM. Based on the numerical re-
sults, the positional temperatures of the 3-D FEM result are used
to generate a set of RC components for a thermal network. In
this paper, the RCCM is investigated to extract the thermal net-
work. The dynamic response can be performed very efficiently
within a few minutes by using the RCCM. Finally, this thermal
network has been inserted and implemented into the circuit sim-
ulator providing the electrothermal behavior of the total system
simultaneously.
This approach enables the system designer to couple the
thermal information with a circuit simulator for predicting
the behavior of the IGBT module system operated under
realistic arbitrary conditions. In addition, the prospect for a
computer-aided thermal network model of the total system will
have a tremendous impact on the computational time to predict
the junction temperatures of traction systems.
406
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ADVANCED PACKAGING, VOL. 24, NO. 3, AUGUST 2001
Chan-Su Yun received the M.S. degree in electronic
engineering from Chung-Ang University, Korea and
the Ph.D. degree in engineering sciences from the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Lau-
sanne, Switzerland.
In 1986, he joined Samsung Electronics, where
he was in charge for the process/device modeling
and applications of TCAD tools. From 1991 to
1995, He was one of responsible persons for
development of the 256M DRAM’s using 0.25 m
CMOS technologies. His activities were included
process, device modeling and characterization for optimized product design,
high-performance, and high-speed memory devices for low-voltage/power
applications. Since 1996, he has worked as a Research Assistant at the
Integrated Systems Laboratory, ETH, Zürich, where he worked on the field
of Technology CAD development, especially concerning electrothermal
simulations of microelectronic systems and their packages. He has authored
or co-authored more than 16 technical papers and 15 patents. His research
interests are microelectronic packages, computer science, process/device, and
package/die level applications using TCAD tools.
Paolo Malberti, photograph and biography not available at the time of publi-
cation.
Mauro Ciappa received the M.S. degree in physics
from the University Zürich, Switzerland, and the
Ph.D. degree in engineering sciences from the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology, ETH, Lausanne.
In 1986, he joined the Reliability Laboratory, ETH,
where he was head of the Failure Analysis and Relia-
bility Physics Laboratory and Lecturer for reliability
physics and failure analysis techniques until 1997. In
1998, he joined the Integrated Systems Laboratory,
ETH, where he is in charge of physical characteri-
zation of semiconductor devices. He published more
than 50 papers in the field of reliability physics, two-dimensional dopant pro-
filing, thermal management of power devices, and he is co-editor of a monog-
raphy on electron and optical beam testing.
Dr. Ciappa received the IEEE Third Millennium Medal for his contributions
to the reliability physics field, in 2000.
Wolfgang Fichtner (M’79–SM’84–F’90) received
the Dipl.Ing. degree in physics and the Ph.D. degree in
electrical engineering from the Technical University
of Vienna, Austria, in 1974 and 1978, respectively.
From 1975 to 1978, he was an Assistant Professor
in the Department of Electrical Engineering,
Technical University of Vienna. From 1979 through
1985, he worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray
Hill, NJ. Since 1985, he has been Professor and
Head of the Integrated Systems Laboratory, Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich. In
1993, he founded ISE Integrated Systems Engineering AG, a company in the
field of technology CAD. Since 1999, he has been Head of the Department of
Electrical Engineering, ETH Zürich.
Dr. Fichtner received the IEEE Andy S. Grove Award of the year in 2000 and
is a member of the Swiss National Academy of Engineering.