A new package with kelvin source connection for increasing power density in power electronics design

Nowadays, there is a high demand from the power electronics market in having systems more efficient and compact. Packaging has become one of the focus factors in power electronics. With more sophisticated products being developed today, in term of Silicon device like Power MOSFETs and IGBTs, there are higher loads and stresses being put on the packaging of these semiconductor materials. Today the silicon technology of a power transistor has reached very high integration, having day by day a smaller die size (smaller dimensions and increased performances). So the impact of the parasitic phenomena starts to become more significant than before. In this paper, the parasitic effect of the internal source connection between the die and the package of IGBT will be analyzed. A new Four-lead TO-247 package for the Field stop II IGBT has been will be introduced. The advantage of the kelvin connection will be validated against the normal TO-247 in a 4kW Double-switch-forward-converter prototype. A comparison will be shown between a conventional TO-247 and an innovative one that allows withdrawing the effect of the parasitic source inductance.