High power density thermal management of discrete semiconductor packages enabled by additively manufactured hybrid polymer-metal coolers

Abstract

Discrete-packaged wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor devices provide a flexible and cost-effective solution for scalable highly dense power electronics. However, their utilization at high power levels is limited due to various challenges, while the effective thermal management if one of them. We develop a liquid cooled thermal management solution for discrete semiconductor packages using polymer-metal hybrid cooling structure design and integration. Coolant flowing through an additively manufactured polymer manifold is guided to finned metal heat sinks having low thermal resistance and overall mass. Here, we study a number of prototypes designed for integration of silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs in TO-247 package. The cooling integration is benchmarked with a baseline design having an aluminum heat sink with square inline pin fins. The cooling strategy is tested experimentally with results used to validate a finite element numerical approach. Fin design parameters including fin height, thickness, spacing, and arrangement are studied to assess their impact on heat sink temperature and pressure drop. Zigzag fins showed the most promising performance when compared to straight fins, inline fins, and staggered pin fins. The zigzag design showed lower maximum temperatures at comparable pressure drop with the baseline design. The impact of thermophysical properties of the cooling fluid (water, ethylene glycol, and Novec 7300), heat sink (copper and aluminum), and electrical isolation (gap pad, aluminum nitride) are also reported. The optimal design employing zigzag fins with a copper heat sink and an aluminum nitride heat spreader achieved 32.5 % improvement in thermal performance over the baseline design with a modest 60 % increase in pressure drop and 68 % higher mass. The optimized design enables a maximum heat rejection capability of 225 W per single MOSFET package, an equivalent to 75 W/cm2 heat flux dissipation using single phase cooling.