A cost-effective active cooling method: Thermal performance and cost analysis

This paper presents an active cooling method for power electronics devices especially for insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBT) modules. This method is a kind of liquid cooling, which utilizes the excellent cooling ability of flowing water and bring the heat out of the module through the base plate embedded with micro-channel. Finite element analysis is used to judge the thermal performance, the highest temperature and the temperature uniformity are uniquely concerned. The results showed that this method could satisfy the heat dissipation need of devices with high power densities. Besides, this method relies on the performance, cost and reliability of the pump. A tiny and powerful micro pump would make this active cooling method become practical. However, this kind of micro pumps is usually very expensive. Thus the cost analysis was done to decide whether this kind of cooling method could be used widely in industry.