Accelerated life testing and thermomechanical simulation in power electronic device development

Product development in the power electronic industry is characterized by th e short time-to-market and high-reliability requirements. Improved design m ethods and advanced modelling techniques are therefore required to support package design selection and to arrive at lifetime prediction algorithms fo r failure prevention. In this work, experimental and computational activiti es aimed at supporting the development of a press-pack insulated gate bipol ar transistor (IGBT) is reported. A testing rig for accelerated testing of single IGBT chips under controlled contact pressure conditions is presented . Then, thermomechanical simulations of accelerated tests by the finite ele ment method provided stress-strain evolution in the device and insight into the sources of local degradation.