Liquid-Cooled Heat Sink Optimization for Thermal Imbalance Mitigation in Wide-Bandgap Power Modules

Conference · Thu Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 2020

OSTI ID:1737486

Sahu, Raj ^[1]; Gurpinar, Emre ^[1]; Ozpineci, Burak ^[1]

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1. ORNL

Power semiconductor die layout in substrates used in power modules is generally optimized for minimum electrical parasitics (e.g., stray inductance) by considering the minimum spacing between dies for thermal decoupling. The layout assumes sufficient heat spreading and transfer from dies to the cooling structure. For module designs using a direct substrate cooling method, the base plate is removed, leading to a steady-state thermal asymmetry in the power module due to insufficient heat spreading/transfer. This causes significant temperature differences among the devices. Such unintentional thermal asymmetries can lead to undesirable asymmetries in power conversion among semiconductor devices, which impact reliability. This article proposes a thermal imbalance mitigation method that uses evolutionary optimized liquid-cooled heat sinks to improve the thermal loading among devices.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE; USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1737486
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English