Design of Reference Junction Temperature Swing of Power Module for Thermal Management

Thermal management is a cost-effective means to improve the lifetime of power module, but it also brings negative influence to the converter. To alleviate the negative effect, this article proposes a strategy to design the reference junction temperature swing based on the distribution characteristics of consumed lifetime and the thermal control efficiency. We show that the selected reference temperature swing, including its type and amplitude, allows each application of thermal control to reduce as much consumed lifetime as possible and, at the same time, to guarantee the performance of the converter. Moreover, this approach does not need to obtain the junction temperature swing in real time, which makes the thermal management simple and efficient. The experimental results are presented to verify the merits of the proposed strategy. This article also evaluates the impact of uncertainties due to the semiconductor parameter variations and performs the error analysis of junction temperature estimation.