Simulations and measurements of annealed pyrolytic graphite-metal composite baseplates

Abstract

We investigated the usability of anisotropic materials as inserts in aluminum-matrix-composite baseplates for typical high performance power semiconductor modules using finite-element simulations and transient plane source measurements. For simulations, several physical modules can be used, which are suitable for different thermal boundary conditions. By comparing different modules and options of heat transfer we found non-isothermal simulations to be closest to reality for temperature distribution at the surface of the heat sink. We optimized the geometry of the graphite inserts for best heat dissipation and based on these results evaluated the thermal resistance of a typical power module using calculation time optimized steady-state simulations. Here we investigated the influence of thermal contact conductance (TCC) between metal matrix and inserts on the heat dissipation. We found improved heat dissipation compared to the plain metal baseplate for a TCC of 200 kW/m2/K and above.To verify the simulations we evaluated cast composite baseplates with two different insert geometries and measured their averaged lateral thermal conductivity using a transient plane source (HotDisk) technique at room temperature. For the composite baseplate we achieved local improvements in heat dissipation compared to the plain metal baseplate.