A Temperature-dependent Thermal Model of Silicon Carbide MOSFET Module for Long-term Reliability Assessment

The silicon carbide (SiC) device is by far the most promising technology for the next-generation power electronic systems. However, the wide application of SiC device is inhibited by its reliability uncertainties, and a comprehensive SiC thermal model, which considers the temperature-dependency, is still missing for long-term reliability assessment. Thus, this paper proposes a temperature-dependent thermal model of SiC MOSFET module, which is composed of RC lumped elements and it is suitable for long-term reliability analysis. To begin with, the temperature-dependent thermal properties of the packaging materials (including SiC) are fully investigated. Then, the finite element method (FEM) based analysis containing temperature-dependency is utilized to extract both the self-heating and cross-coupling thermal impedances. Finally, a diagram of the RC lumped temperature-dependent thermal model is proposed, which is verified using a 3-level active neutral-point clamped (3-L ANPC) study case by performing its PLECS simulation.