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Registered Member #152
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 03:36PM
Location: Czech Rep.
Posts: 3384
Of course it everything always ends up in exceeding the maximum temperature in some part of the module, but stating just that doesn't really help us much.
Take for example the bonding wire, which acts as a resistance rather than the constant voltage drop on the die. So if you decrease the duty cycle and increase peak current, the die will dissipate around the same amount of heat, but the temperature of the connecting wires will increase and they may melt.
Then, I have had may "cold" failures with the peak currents well within the maximum ratings. I guess this may be because of turning the IGBT on/off too fast, so the current during switching transitions flows just in a part of the die. Again the allowable dissipation is not exceeded, but the hot spots inside the die destroy the part.
Then, of course, you have the voltage overshoot and this may have nothing to do with die temperature.
Registered Member #33
Joined: Sat Feb 04 2006, 01:31PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 971
There is a bit more to it than the wire analogy, even though heat is the main worry.
While I agree that heating has a great deal to do with how long a transistor lasts, aren't there also pure device-physics limitations on how much current a given die can carry?
Yes, there is. For a given gate current, the IGBT can only support a certain collector current before going out of saturation. At this point, the current remains constant and Vce rises above (Vce(sat) + IcR) and the dissipation rises dramatically. This is not usually a problem if reasonable gate voltages are used, but it can become a problem at lower gate voltages and higher currents.
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