Effect of the thermal contact resistance on the heat dissipation performance of the press-pack IGBT module

Abstract

Different from the typical wire-bonded IGBT ( insulated gate bipolar transistor ) modules, Press-pack IGBT (PP-IGBT) has the advantage of double-side cooling, which can effectively improve the efficiency of heat dissipation and has been widely used. PP-IGBT has an asymmetric structure, which results in a different heat dissipation path on the collector side from that on the emitter side. Thermal contact resistance is an important parameter of PP- IGBT, the increase of surface roughness between the internal contact surfaces of the device will change the thermal contact resistance of the interface, which will affect the heat dissipation efficiency of the device. And then reduce the life and reliability of the device. Therefore, it is very important to study the effect of the thermal contact resistance on the heat dissipation performance of the PP-IGBT. In this paper, ABAQUS software is used to conduct thermalel-ectrical-structural coupling analysis on PP-IGBT module 3D finite element model, and the finite element model after the change of contact thermal resistance is calculated and compared. The results show that the collector side heat dissipation path can take away more heat than the emitter side heat dissipation path, and the heat dissipation efficiency of device decreases with thermal contact resistance increases. It will be helpful to optimize PP-IGBT and make the service life of the device longer.