Thermal Management of Silicon Carbide Power Module for Military Hybrid Vehicles
Kyle Gould, Steve Q.Cai, Charles Neft, and Avijit Bhunia
Teledyne Scientific & Imaging, LLC
1049 Camino Dos Rios
Thousand Oaks, CA 91360, U.S.A.
Avijit.bhunia@teledyne.com
Abstract
De-rating of power electronics is a common practice in
harsh environment operating conditions. Advanced cooling
solutions are needed to overcome the thermal limitations and
prevent the de-rating of power components. This study
investigates a silicon carbide power module for 28 V DC to
300 V DC power conversion (or reverse) in military hybrid
vehicle applications. A combined experimental and numerical
modeling effort is reported, to accurately predict the silicon
carbide switch (device) junction temperature. The results
show that jet impingement cooling at the module base plate
increases the module heat dissipation capability by 2.5X and
1.5X, compared to the commercial-off-the-shelf cold plate
cooling and micro-channel cooling solutions respectively.
Keywords
Silicon carbide power electronics, Thermal management,
Liquid cooling, Jet impingement, Harsh environment
Nomenclature
Tj Device junction temperature (°C).
k Thermal conductivity (W/mK).
Dj Jet diameter (µm).
S Standoff or impingement distance (µm).
S/Dj Dimensionless standoff or impingement
distance.
QL Coolant flow rate (cm3/min).
Rj-c Thermal resistance from junction to coolant
(°C/W).
ΔP Pressure drop (psi).
QH Heat dissipation (Watts).
TL,in Coolant inlet temperature (°C).
1. Introduction
Thermal management of semiconductor devices in power
modules is an important problem for a variety of power
conversion applications. Device junction temperature Tj needs
to be maintained below a desirable temperature for reliability.
Wide bandgap devices, such as silicon carbide (SiC), reliably
operate at Tj of 175°C and offer an advantage when compared
with traditional silicon devices which need to be maintained
at ≤ 125°C, thus it is expected that the requirements for SiC
power electronics cooling would be significantly lower.
However, much of this benefit can be lost in a harsh operating
environment. For example, power electronics in hybrid
vehicles need to be cooled by anti-freeze liquid, water-
ethylene glycol (WEG) or water-propylene glycol (WPG)
mixture available at ~100°C with a limited supply dictated by
the system-level pressure drop requirements. The enclosed
power electronics box needs to be placed under the hood of
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the vehicle where local air temperature routinely exceeds
100°C. Under these extreme conditions, the use of
commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) heat sinking solutions is
often insufficient. As a result the power modules are routinely
operated at a lower power level to ensure Tj stays at a
desirable level and reliable operation is achieved. There is a
critical need for high heat flux cooling solutions in custom-
made heat sinks.
A significant amount of research over the past decade has
focused on various high heat flux liquid cooling techniques
for power converter modules. Micro or mini-channel flow
[e.g. 1, 2], spray [e.g. 3, 4], and jet impingement [e.g. 5, 6] are
the most commonly investigated approaches. In this article we
present a resounding evidence of the necessity of these
solutions and their effectiveness for cooling, specifically for
silicon carbide (SiC) power electronics developed for military
hybrid vehicle applications. A jet impingement-cooled heat
exchanger has been designed for cooling the base plate of a
600 V/ 50 A SiC power module (rated at 175°C device
junction temperature) using 100oC WEG coolant. The jet
impingement-cooled heat exchanger was compared with two
COTS solutions, a cold plate with embedded tube and a
micro-channel cooler.
2. Silicon Carbide (SiC) Power Module Cooling Study
A high-temperature, SiC Junction Field Effect Transistor
(JFET) power module is designed and tested for use in a bi-
directional, single-stage DC-DC converter. The converter is
the interface between a 28 V battery and a 300 V bus, and is
required to operate in the harsh environment of a military
hybrid vehicle, with 100°C WEG liquid coolant and an
ambient air temperature of 120°C. The power module consists
of two switches in a single pole configuration with SiC
Schottky diodes used as freewheeling diodes. The
components are mounted on an aluminum-nitride (AlN)
direct-bonded copper (DBC) substrate, which is bonded to a
high thermal conductivity graphite-aluminum baseplate (k
~350 W/mK). A high-temperature Boron-Nitride loaded
Silicone gel, stable up to ~320°C is used for passivation.
Under the prescribed operating conditions, the module is
designed for an output power of 937.5 W. Figures 1 shows a
picture of the module.
During the initial tests of 28 V to 300 V DC power
conversion, the module was mounted on a COTS aluminum
cold plate with embedded meandering copper tube. A number
of modules failed within the first one or two hours of
operation, while the goal was to demonstrate power
conversion for fifty hours. We suspected part of the problem
was thermal. Possibly the cooling technique was not adequate
and the device junction temperature was far exceeding the
105 30th SEMI-THERM Symposium
 reliable operating point of 175°C. Yet, we could not directly
measure the device junction temperature under operating
condition due to the presence of opaque passivating gel.
Lower JFET Switches
Upper
Diodes
Lower
Diodes
Upper JFET Switches
Figure 1: SiC power module designed for 938 W output
power.
To conduct a systematic study on COTS cooling
techniques and advanced, high heat flux cooling techniques,
we used a dummy module. We conducted a few preliminary
experiments with the SiC module, converting from 28 V DC
to 300 V DC and vice versa at various operating frequency
conditions and measured the power conversion efficiency.
Based on these experiments, we established that the 16 JFETs
of the lower switch are the primary heat dissipating
components and made a reasonable estimate of the heat loss
from these components (151 W). Subsequently, for the
purpose of the present study, we developed a dummy module,
a simplified resistive heat source, mimicking heat dissipation
from the 16 JFETs. The base plate temperatures under these
resistive heat sources are measured experimentally. Figure 2
shows a schematic of the mimicked module.
Figure 2: Schematic of the experimental copper heater block
with sixteen legs mimicking the lower switch or sixteen JFET
devices of the 938 W SiC module.
We also developed a high-fidelity, finite volume-based
computational model of heat conduction through the device
packaging layers, using the commercial software tool ANSYS
FLUENT. The model uses heat load on each JFET die and the
experimentally measured heat transfer coefficient (at the
dummy module base plate) as boundary conditions, and
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predicts the SiC JFET device junction temperature. Figures 3
shows an example of the computational model developed with
temperature profile of two JFET devices at the middle of the
sixteen device array. An estimate of the device junction
temperature (Tj), obtained by this combined experimental-
computational modeling approach, is used to compare various
cooling solutions.
Figure 3: Example of temperature contours of two JFET
device die at the center of the sixteen die array of the lower
switch of the module, obtained by computational model using
ANSYS FLUENTTM.
The heater block with its base plate shown in Figure 2 is
cooled by three cooling approaches, COTS cold plate, COTS
micro-channel, and liquid jet impingement. WEG coolant (50
volume% mixture of water and ethylene glycol), at an inlet
temperature of 100°C, is used for all three cooling
approaches. For COTS cold plate and micro-channel cooling,
the heater block/ base plate assembly is mounted on the
cooling solution with four bolts and thermal paste between the
cooling solution and the copper base plate. The COTS cooling
solutions are shown in Figure 4.
(a) (b)
Figure 4: Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) cooling
approaches: (a) Cold plate – liquid-cooled heat sink with
meandering copper tube embedded into an aluminum base
plate. Cold plate dimensions: 0.152 m × 0.089 m × 0.0127 m.
Embedded tube diameter: 0.009525 m (3/8th inch). (b) Micro-
channel cooler overall dimensions: 0.127 m × 0.064 m ×
0.0127 m. Inlet and outlet tube diameter 0.0095 m. Micro-
channel dimensions: Channel width 8 × 10-4 m (800 µm),
height 0.0048 m, 42 channels.
30th SEMI-THERM Symposium
 For liquid jet impingement cooling, an array of 16 jets,
each 200 µm in diameter (Dj) impinge on the base plate at the
center of the footprint location of each of the 16 legs. The
impingement distance (S), i.e. the distance between the top
wall of the micro-orifice plate from where the jet emerges and
the base plate of the heater block, is kept constant at 200 µm,
thus the impingement corresponds to a confined jet
impingement solution with S/Dj = 1. Being a confined jet, the
cooling solution is expected to be gravity-independent,
although we did not conduct a verification test. The jet
impingement parameters chosen in this study are based on our
prior experience and multiple publications (e.g. [5, 7]). They
may not be optimal and the optimization is not the focus of
this study. Further experiments can be done to investigate the
jet pattern, jet diameter, and the standoff distance.
3. Results & Discussion
Figure 5 shows a comparison of the COTS cold plate
cooling with the jet impingement cooling solution. An
average of the sixteen base plate temperature measurements
are reported at various heat dissipation conditions at a
constant coolant flow rate of 156 cm3/min. The benefit of jet
impingement cooling at lowering the mimicked module base
plate temperature is evident. At the design heat load of 151
W, which corresponds to 273 W/cm2 heat flux at the device-
level, the base plate temperature is lowered from 165°C to
121°C.
Figure 5: Comparison of liquid micro-jet impingement
cooling with COTS cold plate: Variation of experimentally
measured base plate temperature at various heat dissipation
conditions at a constant coolant flow rate (QL) of 156
cm3/min. Coolant: 50-50 volume% of water-ethylene glycol at
100°C coolant temperature.
The base plate temperature measurements are then used to
calculate the heat transfer coefficient at the base plate of the
mimicked module. Subsequently this heat transfer coefficient
value is used as a boundary condition in the ANSYS
FLUENT model of the power convertor module to determine
the SiC JFET device junction temperature. Table I shows a
comparison of the results for a COTS cold plate, a COTS
micro-channel cooler, and jet impingement at the SiC module
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lower switch power dissipation condition of 151 W. These
results show a drastic improvement in performance for the jet
impingement cooling, including a 2.5X and 1.5X increase in
power dissipation capability over the COTS cold plate and
micro-channel cooler respectively while keeping the junction
temperature (Tj) below 175 °C.
Rj-c Tj at QH at ΔP
(°C/W) QH = 151 W Tj = 175 °C (Psi)
COTS cold plate 1.25 289.5 60 1
COTS micro-
0.76 215.0 99 1
channel cooler
Jet impingement
0.45 168.5 167 5
cooling
Table I: Comparison of thermal and pressure drop
performance of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) cold plate,
micro-channel cooler and optimized jet impingement cooling.
Rj-c is device junction to coolant thermal resistance, Tj =
maximum JFET device junction temperature, QH = heat
dissipation, and ΔP = pressure drop in the cooling loop.
Coolant flow rate (QL) = 195 cm3/min with an inlet
temperature (TL,in) of 100 °C.
Table I also shows a comparison of pressure drop (ΔP) in
the cooling loop, an indication of the pump input power for
various cooling techniques. ΔP in the COTS cooling
technique is ~1 psi, which is the minimum resolution of the
pressure gauge used in this experiment. In comparison, ΔP is
~5X higher for jet impingement cooling. One can potentially
argue that the thermal performance of the COTS cooling
solutions could be better with higher flow rate and matching
ΔP. However, the application limits the flow rate.
Furthermore, a generic conclusion based on this particular
comparison is misleading. The current setup of the mimicked
module cooling has only 16 jets. An actual system will consist
of hundreds of jets. For example, the 938 W SiC module
considered in this study is one of eight modules put together
for a 7.5 kW DC DC converter system. An impingement-
cooled converter will have 352 jets (44 jets per module × 8
modules). For a jet impingement cooling system most of the
ΔP occurs in the micro-orifices. Our prior work [8] shows that
increasing the number of jets does not significantly alter the
overall ΔP as an array of micro-orifices act as parallel paths.
In other words ΔP for jet impingement cooling does not scale
up as more impingement-cooled modules are added in parallel
and the flow rate (QL) increases. In comparison for flow
through tube and micro-channels as in COTS cooling, ΔP
increase is proportional to QL2. Thus we expect for larger
system, such as the 7.5 kW converter, ΔP and pump input
power will be comparable, if not better, for jet impingement
cooling.
4. Conclusions
Liquid jet impingement cooling of high power converter
modules can significantly improve the power module rating
compared to traditional cooling techniques. In this paper we
show a drastic improvement in module heat dissipation
capability, 2.5X improvement over COTS cold plate and a
30th SEMI-THERM Symposium
 1.5X improvement over current state of the art micro-channel
cooler. Jet impingement offers an efficient way to allow
current power electronics to be pushed to new levels of power
output without compromising reliability.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support
from the U.S. Army Tank and Automotive Research
Development & Engineering Center (TARDEC, Contract no
W56HZV-10-C-0114) under the Program monitoring of Mr.
Matthew Walters, Kevin Boice, Gus Khalil, and George
Hamilton. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this material are those of the
author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S.
Army Contracting Command. The technical discussion and
help from colleagues Mr. Emil Hanna and Dr. Vivek
Mehrotra are highly appreciated. We also wish to thank
colleagues Mr. Alex Moffatt and Mark Gardner for
fabrication of the test setup.
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