Simulation of power dissipation in semiconductor devices of power electronic circuits

The internal temperature of semiconductor devices strongly influences their functional and reliability performance. The internal temperature depends on the electrical power dissipated in devices and transferred into heat. The time dependence of dissipated power has to be known for exact calculation of internal temperature changes. The time dependence of power dissipated in electronic devices during fast transient states is not easy to calculate with a general purpose circuit simulator such as SPICE. It can be calculated after introducing special device macromodels in which the nonlinear capacitances are represented by equivalent sub-circuits. The method of calculation of dissipated power is described in the paper and several examples of calculations are presented