Discrete Power Devices and Power Modules

Abstract

Methods devoted to electrothermal simulation are presented as a useful tool for both the analysis and characterization of behavior of power semiconductor devices standing alone, and/or coupled in integrated circuits or power modules. First of all the implementation of a devised flow to generate the layer-based electrothermal PSpice model of an IPEM (Integrated Power Electronics Module) and the simulation flow of the model is presented. The proposed methodology allows reducing an electrothermal multi-domain problem to a single electrical one. The general PSpice-like nature of the proposed model makes it suitable for a wide range of simulation frameworks and avoids the integration of heterogeneous multiphysics models. The outlining of both the electrical and thermal PSpice layers is discussed, and the implementation into the final model is presented. Besides, the validation procedure of the proposed approach is described and the results compared with the ones obtained by a commercial finite-element package used as a benchmark. Secondly, two main approaches to fast 3-D electrothermal simulation are proposed. The designed methods—automated interaction of Sentaurus Device and HSPICE based on the relaxation method and mixed-mode setup in Sentaurus Device, by Synopsys TCAD Sentaurus—are compared with standard device finite-element model simulation and a direct method with an equivalent thermal 3-D RC network. The proposed simulation methods have been developed for decreasing the simulation time for complex 3-D devices. A superjunction MOSFET and a DC–DC converter module under different operating conditions are used to perform the validation of the simulation and calibration of their parameters.