Abstract
High-power modules use substrates to house the semiconductor device and for electrical insulation. These substrates are constructed with thermally conductive dielectric material sandwiched between two metals to extract heat from semiconductor chips. Thus, the required cooling performance of a power module is linked to the substrate’s thermal performance and can vary based on the substrate technologies. In this study, five substrate technologies were evaluated for space-restricted applications: direct-bonded copper (DBC), an insulated metal substrate (IMS), a thermally annealed pyrolytic graphite (TPG)-based IMS, DBC-based double-sided cooling, and direct-bonded aluminum (DBA) where the heat sink is directly attached without thermal interface materials (TIMs). The finite element (FE) analysis results suggest that the popular DBC substrate has thermal performance better than that of the other substrates for space-constrained applications. To further improve the thermal performance, a modified DBC substrate was proposed where a copper block was added between the semiconductor and the DBC substrate to achieve heat spreading underneath the chip. The modified DBC performance was then compared with the aforementioned substrates and the results showed significant thermal performance improvement. The results were verified with experimental results where the proposed substrate showed 20% more loss handling capability compared to an identical DBC substrate.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 10012-10024 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2025 |
Funding
Received 5 March 2024; revised 17 June 2024, 9 September 2024, and 23 December 2024; accepted 21 February 2025. Date of publication 24 March 2025; date of current version 24 July 2025. This work was supported by UT-Battelle, LLC, through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Vehicle Technologies Office under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Expo (ECCE), Nashville, TN, October 29–November 2, 2023 [DOI: 10.1109/ECCE53617.2023.10362265]. (Corresponding author: Shajjad Chowdhury.) The authors are with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Knoxville, TN 37932 USA (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TTE.2025.3552980
Keywords
- Direct-bonded aluminum (DBA)
- direct-bonded copper (DBC)
- double-sided cooling
- insulated metal substrate (IMS)
- power electronic substrate
- thermally annealed pyrolytic graphite (TPG)-based IMS