Tackling reliability of power module

Power modules are used in many of today´s applications: automotive, renewable energy resources, and railway traction. The power module market will continue to grow as the industry is going towards zero carbon emissions. To ensure those products last 15 to 30 years, reliability of the power modules is extremely important. Design for reliability is not an obvious task, as the current trends include the reduction of the die sizes, module, while the power is still increasing. This results in growing power densities, so proper thermal management is an increasingly important task in today´s power module design. This paper will demonstrate how thermal transient testing can help identify the root cause of power module failure in a system environment. This non-destructive technique can also be used to assess the thermal performance of aging components and highlight any material degradation.