With the rise of global awareness of promoting green energy, and in order to reduce global carbon emissions, high-carbon emission energy sources such as coal, natural gas, and gasoline are gradually being replaced by renewable energy sources. As a key component of personal mobile vehicles, power modules need to meet the high-frequency and high-speed requirements, and the thinness of their structure will also affect the critical reliability of the power module applications. The thin structure can improve the heat dissipation capacity of the power module and reduce the size of the system. The heat dissipation capacity is enhanced by shortening the heat dissipation path.　　However, the direct bonded copper substrate used in traditional power modules still has the problem of warpage caused by the process, which leads to the problem of not being densely assembled with the heat sink fins, which also causes the power module to fail and cannot meet the requirements of high-voltage and high-current. Because the direct bonding copper type substrate consists of a sandwich structure with a ceramic layer between two pieces of copper and solder materials bonded to the copper substrate. The direct bonding copper substrate because coefficient of thermal expansion of each layer mismatch, causing the power module to warp after assembly process.　　Therefore, in this study, a thin and low-warpage power module with an insulating metal substrate, which is compose of thermal interface material between two pieces of copper, was selected to enhance its heat dissipation capability and maintain low warpage and high mechanical reliability. The warpage caused by the assembly of the traditional direct bonded copper substrate and the insulated metal substrate power module is compared with the manufacturing process. From the experiment, due to the small number of stacked layers of the insulated metal substrate power module, the warpage caused by assembly is smaller than that of the direct bonded copper substrate.　　Finally, use the finite element method to analyze the automotive standard power cycle reliability test of the insulated metal substrate power module, and estimate the power cycle reliability fatigue life. At the same time, power module production and power cycle experiments are carried out to verify the correctness and credibility of the simulation results. In order to consider that the chip of the power module generates heat due to the power loss of the actual use, the power cycle test of the power module will follow the specification of European Center for Power Electronics.

The Novel Power Module With Insulated Metal Substrate for Power Cycling Finite Element Analysis and Reliability Evaluation

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2021/volume/85543

ASME 2021 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE2021)

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