ON THE EFFECT OF POWER CYCLING STRESS ON IGBT MODULES

IGBT reliability is becoming of great relevance, due to the range of a pplication of these devices. Nevertheless, no standard test methods ha ve been established, in order to evaluate their power cycling reliabil ity. On this paper we report on the effect of Delta T and T-jmax on th e power cycling capability of IGBT dice, by means of a matrix of stres s cycles with different values of Delta T and T-jmax. Failure analysis has been performed, in order to understand the failure mechanisms ind uced by the stress. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved .