FEA-Dominant Reliability and Lifetime Model of Double-Sided Cooling SiC Power Module

Abstract

Owing to the low parasitic inductance, high power density, and excellent heat extraction performance, double-sided cooling (DSC) is regarded as a promising packaging solution for the silicon carbide (SiC) power module. Nevertheless, given the unclear failure mechanism and missed lifetime model, the reliability assessment and lifetime prediction of the DSC SiC power module remains a concern. Besides, the accelerated aging test generally used for the reliability assessment of the SiC power module is extremely time-consuming and costly. Therefore, the obstacles mentioned before limit the development and deployment of the DSC SiC power module. Aiming to fulfill these research gaps, based on the aging mechanism and failure criterion of packaging materials, the lifetime model of the DSC SiC power module is proposed in this paper. Comparative experiments show that the relative error of the FEA-dominated model is less than 6%. Moreover, the stress property and creep principle of the solder layer in SiC and Si power modules are assessed, respectively. Besides, the lifetime models of SiC and Si power modules applying different packaging materials are created. It is found that the lifetime of the DSC power module is twice that of the single-sided cooling (SSC) counterpart. Furthermore, applying the same packaging, the lifetime of the SiC power module decreases by 70% compared with the Si counterpart. In addition, the lifetime of the DSC SiC power module affected by different materials such as ceramic and spacer is studied in order to enhance its reliability.