Condition monitoring (CM) has already been proven to be a cost effective means of enhancing reliability and improving customer service in power equipment, such as transformers and rotating electrical machinery. CM for power semiconductor devices in power electronic converters is at a more embryonic stage; however, as progress is made in understanding semiconductor device failure modes, appropriate sensor technologies, and signal processing techniques, this situation will rapidly improve. This technical review is carried out with the aim of describing the current state of the art in CM research for power electronics. Reliability models for power electronics, including dominant failure mechanisms of devices are described first. This is followed by a description of recently proposed CM techniques. The benefits and limitations of these techniques are then discussed. It is intended that this review will provide the basis for future developments in power electronics CM.

Condition Monitoring for Device Reliability in Power Electronic Converters: A Review

Light emitting diodes reliability review

Multi-objective meta-heuristics: An overview of the current state-of-the-art

The need for high power density and high temperature capabilities in today's electronic devices continues to grow. More robust devices with reliable and stable functioning capabilities are needed, for example in aerospace and automotive industries as well as sensor technology. These devices need to perform under extreme temperature conditions, and not show any deterioration in terms of switching speeds, junction temperatures, and power density, and so on. While the bulk of research is performed to source and manufacture these high temperature devices, the device interconnect technology remains under high focus for packaging. The die attach material has to withstand high temperatures generated during device functioning and also cope with external conditions which will directly determine how well the device performs in the field. This literature work seeks to review the numerous research attempts thus far for high temperature die attach materials on wide band gap materials of silicon carbide, gallium nitride and diamond, document their successes, concerns and application possibilities, all of which are essential for high temperature reliability.

Die Attach Materials for High Temperature Applications: A Review

Recent growth of the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) module market has been driven largely by the increasing demand for an efficient way to control and distribute power in the field of renewable energy, hybrid/electric vehicles, and industrial equipment. For safety-critical and mission-critical applications, the reliability of IGBT modules is still a concern. Understanding the physics-of-failure of IGBT modules has been critical to the development of effective condition monitoring (CM) techniques as well as reliable prognostic methods. This review paper attempts to summarize past developments and recent advances in the area of CM and prognostics for IGBT modules. The improvement in material, fabrication, and structure is described. The CM techniques and prognostic methods proposed in the literature are presented. This paper concludes with recommendations for future research topics in the CM and prognostics areas.

Physics-of-Failure, Condition Monitoring, and Prognostics of Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor Modules: A Review

Recent trends including rapid increases in the power ratings and continued miniaturization of semiconductor devices have pushed the heat dissipation of power electronics well beyond the range of conventional thermal management solutions, making control of device temperature a critical issue in the thermal packaging of power electronics. Although evaporative cooling is capable of removing very high heat fluxes, two-phase cold plates have received little attention for cooling power electronics modules. In this work, device-level analytical modeling and system-level thermal simulation are used to examine and compare single-phase and two-phase cold plates for a specified inverter module, consisting of 12 pairs of silicon insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) devices and diodes. For the conditions studied, an R134a-cooled, two-phase cold plate is found to substantially reduce the maximum IGBT temperature and spatial temperature variation, as well as reduce the pumping power and flow rate, in comparison to a conventional single-phase water-cooled cold plate. These results suggest that two-phase cold plates can be used to substantially improve the performance, reliability, and conversion efficiency of power electronics systems.

Two-Phase Liquid Cooling for Thermal Management of IGBT Power Electronic Module

Multiple objectives decision making (MODM) in engineering design refers to obtaining a preferred optimal solution in the context of conflicting design objectives. Problems with multiple objectives do not have a unique optimal solution but a set of Pareto optimal solutions. This paper presents a new interactive multistage MODM method which captures a decision maker’s preference structure in order to obtain a preferred Pareto solution even for non-convex problems. Representative subsets of an entire Pareto optimal set are generated and expanded based on the decision maker’s preference. The e-constraint method is used to constrain the multiple objectives problem based on the decision maker’s feedback. In addition, ideas from an interactive weighted Tchebycheff approach are applied to reduce the feasible region at each stage, ensuring that the process eventually converges to a preferred solution. The method is demonstrated with two examples: (i) a simple two-bar truss design, and (ii) a more complicated problem in power electronic module design.

An Interactive Multistage ε-Inequality Constraint Method For Multiple Objectives Decision Making

https://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/26673.pdf

Numerical investigation and sensitivity analysis of manifold microchannel coolers

In this paper, the issues pertaining to moisture diffusion in PEMs are explored and discussed. The existing models of moisture diffusion in plastic molding compounds and PEMS are reviewed. Results, modeling and analysis of moisture sorption experiments performed in this study are presented. The moisture sorption experiments were conducted on a set of PEM samples with a common type of encapsulant material to 1) characterize sorption behavior; 2) compare weight gain measurement to the measurement of moisture concentration using a moisture sensor device at the die surface; 3) assess the moisture sensor measurement method. In the case of PEM samples tested in this study, simple Fickian diffusion was shown to agree closely with the experimental results. In one case, a relatively small anomaly from Fickian diffusion was observed and was attributed to swelling and relaxation phenomena at later stages of moisture sorption in the molding compound. The calibration constants determined for the sensors in this study were found to be significantly different from those collected by the manufacturer prior to the encapsulation of the devices. This problem is believed to be degradation in sensitivity of the moisture sensor due to exposure to high temperatures and storage conditions.

Patrick McCluskey

Papers

Physics-of-Failure, Condition Monitoring, and Prognostics of Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor Modules: A Review

Two-Phase Liquid Cooling for Thermal Management of IGBT Power Electronic Module

An Interactive Multistage ε-Inequality Constraint Method For Multiple Objectives Decision Making

Numerical investigation and sensitivity analysis of manifold microchannel coolers

A comparison of the theory of moisture diffusion in plastic encapsulated microelectronics with moisture sensor chip and weight-gain measurements