Investigations into High Temperature Components and Packaging

Abstract

The purpose of this report is to document the work that was performed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in support of the development of high temperature power electronics and components with monies remaining from the Semikron High Temperature Inverter Project managed by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). High temperature electronic components are needed to allow inverters to operate in more extreme operating conditions as required in advanced traction drive applications. The trend to try to eliminate secondary cooling loops and utilize the internal combustion (IC) cooling system, which operates with approximately 105 C water/ethylene glycol coolant at the output of the radiator, is necessary to further reduce vehicle costs and weight. The activity documented in this report includes development and testing of high temperature components, activities in support of high temperature testing, an assessment of several component packaging methods, and how elevated operating temperatures would impact their reliability. This report is organized with testing of new high temperature capacitors in Section 2 and testing of new 150 C junction temperature trench insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBTs) in Section 3. Section 4 addresses some operational OPAL-GT information, which was necessary for developing module level tests. Section 5 summarizes calibration of equipment needed for the high temperature testing. Section 6 details some additional work that was funded on silicon carbide (SiC) device testing for high temperature use, and Section 7 is the complete text of a report funded from this effort summarizing packaging methods and their reliability issues for use in high temperature power electronics. Components were tested to evaluate the performance characteristics of the component at different operating temperatures. The temperature of the component is determined by the ambient temperature (i.e., temperature surrounding the device) plus the temperature increase inside the device due the internal heat that is generated due to conduction and switching losses. Capacitors and high current switches that are reliable and meet performance specifications over an increased temperature range are necessary to realize electronics needed for hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs), fuel cell (FC) and plug-in HEVs (PHEVs). In addition to individual component level testing, it is necessary to evaluate and perform long term module level testing to ascertain the effects of high temperature operation on power electronics.