IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 20, NO.
3, MAY 2005
Power Electronics Cooling Effectiveness
Versus Thermal Inertia
Luc Meysenc, Member, IEEE, M. Jylhäkallio, and Peter Barbosa, Member, IEEE
Abstract—Today, the popularity of power electronics integration
is increasing. Despite the prospect of fully integrated module, in-
cluding features like driving and control electronics, protection,
power integration has not taken-off for medium to high power elec-
tronics applications. Manufacturing issues such as yield, reliability
and return-on-investment for a new fabrication line are the major
blocking points. As a first step toward integrated modules, inte-
gration of the cooling system appears realistic and cost effective.
Increasing the cooling effectiveness could double the output cur-
rent of an inverter while using the same amount of silicon. On the
other hand, integrated cooling leads to small thermal inertia, which
can generate high temperature variation under load cycling con-
dition. This paper highlights the relationship between cooling ef-
fectiveness and thermal inertia. Typical performances of several
cooling systems are compared under load cycling condition to ex-
plain how to take into account the variation of the losses in the
choice of a cooling technique at the design stage. As an example,
a standard liquid cooled plate performed similar to an integrated
microchannel network for specific load variation frequencies.
Index Terms—Liquid cooled plate, load variation frequencies,
power electronics integration, silicon, thermal inertia.
I. INTRODUCTION
T ODAY, there is a growing trend toward power electronics
integration [1], [2]. In most cases, this trend is technology
driven and for a given application, gain in terms of cost, relia-
bility or manufacturability are often not achieved. As manufac-
turing quality and stability depend strongly on the production
volumes, it is difficult to setup a production line for integrated
power electronics for medium to high power applications (here
defined as above 200 V–20 kW), where the amount of equip-
ment sold is relatively small and the number of lost production
batches before stabilizing the processes have a large impact on
the final cost.
However, in a medium term perspective, despite heavy in-
vestments, significant technological risks and complex business
models, power integration is the most promising option to dras-
tically cut down the cost of power electronics equipments.
Power integration does not have a well defined perimeter and
like all integration fields has no limit on the features that can
be embedded. However, integration in the area of high power
semiconductor modules generally considers embedding:
1) protection circuits [3], [4];
2) driving circuits [5];
Manuscript received April 28, 2004; revised January 10, 2005. Recom-
mended by Associate Editor J. A. Ferreira.
The authors are with the ABB Switzerland, Ltd., Corporate Research Centre,
Baden-Dättwil, Switzerland (e-mail: luc.meysenc@ch.abb.com; mervi.jyl-
hakallio@ch.abb.com; peter.barbosa@ch.abb.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2005.846548
0885-8993/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE
687
3) snubber [6];
4) control [7];
5) cooling [8].
Cooling integration is highly promising from the manufac-
turing, cost, and risk management aspects, as the impact on the
manufacturing processes could be minimized and the gain at
the system level significant. Unlike circuit integration, cooling
does not affect significantly the reliability of the device since it
is a passive equipment. Without increasing the complexity of
the power devices, more efficient integrated cooling solution
allows increased current density per cm of silicon. To high-
light this fact, loss calculations were performed for a two-level
three-phase inverter containing nonpunch through (NPT)
1.7 kV insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) technology,
considering 1 cm active area per IGBT position (Fig. 1). The
results, plotted in Fig. 2, were computed for a 900-V dc link
inverter switching at a carrier frequency of 750 Hz, with a mod-
ulation index of 0.9 and an output power factor of 0.85. This
operating condition corresponds, for example, to an inverter
driving a motor in traction mode at nominal speed and voltage.
Increasing the cooling effectiveness from 50 W/cm (typi-
cally a standard forced air cooled heatsink) to 120 W/cm (typ-
ically an efficient liquid cooling), allows doubling the output
current of the inverter for the same quantity of silicon (from
40 A/cm to 80 A/cm ). The cost saving is significant and com-
pensates the extra effort needed to integrate the cooling into the
devices.
Integrated cooling is more effective with liquid cooling as
compact and efficient cooling can be achieved. However, as the
mass of material involved in the cooling path is significantly
reduced, the thermal inertia becomes smaller and the system
becomes more sensitive to load variations. Considering 1 cm
of material, uniformly heated on one side and having constant
temperature on the other side (Fig. 3), a simple RC thermal
equivalent electrical model can be established, the losses being
modeled as a current source injecting power in a parallel RC
circuit. The thermal response to a 1 W step input losses is
plotted in Fig. 3 for several typical materials used in power
electronics packaging (Table I).
All the materials, except for Al O , listed in Table I possess
a time constant of approximately one second and irrespective
of the choice of the material used in the design of an integrated
cooling setup, the thermal inertia will remain small and will not
function as a thermal capacitor without significant mass.
For air-cooled systems to be efficient, large surface areas are
required to spread the heat and maximize the final exchange
area. Large surface area, combined with thick diffusion layer
results in high thermal inertia, but makes this cooling technique
less suitable for integration.
688
Fig. 1. Typical characteristic of 1 cm active area NPT IGBT devices.
Fig. 2. Output current of a 6-cm two-level inverter versus the cooling
effectiveness.
The purpose of this paper is to present advantages and draw-
backs of the low inertia, efficiently integrated cooling versus
standard cooling techniques and to identify the best cooling
solution for each application. Finally, the expected benefits of
cooling integration will be shown.
II. JUNCTION TEMPERATURE IN POWER ELECTRONICS
It is worth recalling what junction temperature is in power
electronics. The junction temperature of a device (one should
rather speak about virtual junction temperature or equivalent
junction temperature) is meaningless as long as it is not related
to one or several failure modes of the device. To better under-
stand the fuzzy nature of the term “junction temperature,” it is
important to know that the silicon temperature is not uniform
over a multichip semiconductor module. Variations can occur
from chip to chip as well as within the same chip in steady state
and in dynamic conditions (see Fig. 4).
There are various methods to evaluate the so called “junction
temperature” and each of them will give a different value.
1) Indirect temperature measurement methods using
electrical “temperature-sensitive” parameters such as
collector-emitter voltage (Vce) or gate threshold voltage
(Vgeth). These methods result in a single temperature
value corresponding to a sort of average temperature
[9], [10].
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 20, NO. 3, MAY 2005
2) Direct temperature measurements on chip surface using
infrared cameras or contact optical fibers. Several tem-
perature values corresponding to several locations on the
chips are given by these methods, but one has to choose
a single value that could be the average or the maximum
temperature for example.
3) Numerical simulation methods giving the temperature
distribution such as finite elements for example, but one
has still to choose a representative value [11].
4) Mathematical models which could give a simplified
value corresponding to some average.
Knowing all these different definition methods, it becomes clear
that the junction temperature should only be considered as the
most simplified reliability model of a device. If the designer con-
siders the operating and cycling temperature ranges specified by
the manufacturers, one can reasonably predict the lifetime and
the reliability of the systems [12].
However, for a deeper understanding of the thermal manage-
ment of power electronics devices it is important to comprehend
the fundamental points mentioned hereafter and summarized in
Fig. 5.
The junction temperature must be associated with a
clearly defined method. It can be derived from numer-
ical simulation, mathematical models or measurements.
Once the junction temperature is defined, the same def-
inition should be used to process a set of measurements
or simulations in order to identify the failure modes of
the system relative to the temperature (absolute value or
variation).
The failure modes identified must be correlated to the
junction temperature in order to have predictive model
of the thermal behavior of the system.
The designer will have to design the system according to
the chosen definition of the junction temperature.
Today, this process is implicitly applied by the semiconductor
industry, which provide in the datasheet of the devices thermal
resistances, thermal capacitances and operating limits.
The problem of the definition of the junction temperature
reappears with power integration. This time, however, the man-
ufacturing process changes, new steps are introduced generating
new potential failure modes, and new validation methodology to
correlate these failure modes with a junction temperature defini-
tion are needed. This qualification, time consuming and costly,
MEYSENC et al.: POWER ELECTRONICS COOLING EFFECTIVENESS
Fig. 3. Thermal model for 1 cm of material uniformly heated on one side and with constant temperature on the other side.
TABLE I
TYPICAL THERMAL PROPERTIES OF CLASSICAL MATERIALS USED
FOR POWER ELECTRONICS PACKAGING. THERMAL TIME CONSTANT,
THERMAL RESISTANCE, AND THERMAL CAPACITANCE ARE FOR
THE CASE SHOWN IN FIG. 3
Fig. 4. Temperature distribution over two IGBT chips belonging to the same
module in steady state conditions (105 W/chip, reference temperature at 313 K).
Fig. 5. Relationship between junction temperature and failure modes.
is one of the major drawbacks to the development of power elec-
tronics integration.
Generally, qualification aims at predicting the sensitivity
of the system to the absolute temperature, as well as to the
temperature variation amplitude and to the temperature variation
frequency. These parameters influence the lifetime and the
689
TABLE II
RELIABILITY PREDICTION—ACCELERATION FACTORS
reliability of the silicon chips, interconnections (wire bonds,
electrical terminals, solder bumps), and also all the soldered
and glued elements such as substrates or housing. For each
of these potential failure modes, a predictive methodology
(measurements or simulations) must be in place [13]–[15].
To shorten the duration of these qualification tests, acceler-
ated tests are carried out under high stress level. Then, based on
the results of these accelerated tests, the behavior under normal
stress condition must be extrapolated. Basic rules to define ac-
celeration factors are given in Table II.
III. POWER ELECTRONICS COOLING
Today, for industry or traction applications, depending on the
availability of coolant, the cooling techniques are usually one of
those listed as follows:
1) natural air cooled heatsink;
2) forced air cooled heatsink;
3) liquid cooled plate;
4) heatpipe.
As shown in Fig. 6, the thermal time constant of a cooling setup
decreases when the cooling effectiveness increases. Cooling ef-
fectiveness and thermal time constant ranges given in Fig. 6
can commonly be achieved without additional optimization of
cooling design and the performances given here should be con-
sidered as order of magnitude.
Thermal time constants vary over three to four orders of
magnitude and will strongly influence both maximum tempera-
ture and temperature variation. Consequently, when the load of
a converter is cycling, increasing the cooling effectiveness will
tend to decrease the average temperature, however, the tem-
perature variation around this average value will increase and
counter the gain. This is especially true when efficient cooling
is integrated such as a microchannel network. In this case, ex-
tremely low thermal resistance can be achieved ( 0.1 K/Wcm
690
Fig. 6. Typical Cooling effectiveness and thermal time constant of usual
cooling techniques.
Fig. 7. Measured thermal resistance from junction to liquid of a network of
microchannel heated by a single IGBT chip.
from junction to outlet liquid, Fig. 7) [16]–[18]. Under this
condition, IGBT chips are able to operate with losses around
200 W/cm without the possibility of smoothing junction
temperature variation with the load cycling.
Several directions are investigated for integrated high effec-
tiveness cooling. As mentioned earlier, a liquid cooling system
is the best choice for cooling integration, since power integra-
tion is not compatible with large heat diffusion areas required
by air cooled system. However, one of the main drawbacks of
forced convection liquid microchannels is the high-pressure
drop across the network.
With convective heat transfer, the heat exchange coefficient
being proportional to the friction factor, an increase in the
exchange effectiveness will also increase the pressure drop
[19]. To limit the size of the pumping equipment and design a
low pressure drop cooler, one should also consider two-phase
heat exchangers with a boiling-condensing loop [20]. In this
case, the heat exchange coefficient is no longer proportional
to the pressure drop, since the main part of the pressure drop
does not come from the friction but from the acceleration [21],
[22]. Very high exchange coefficients can be achieved using
two-phase heat exchanger [23]. Contrary to common belief,
such high heat exchange coefficient is not due to the energy
used for the vaporization of the liquid but due to nucleation
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 20, NO. 3, MAY 2005
which breaks the thermal boundary layer against the channel
wall [24].
With two-phase heat exchanger (Fig. 8), the same level of
cooling effectiveness as that obtained with single phase forced
convection can be achieved at a much lower pressure drop and
flow rate (lower by 10 to 100 times) [25], [26]. The low cost of
the cooling loop is a significant advantage compared to the clas-
sical forced convection heat exchanger. However, some extra
constraints such as critical heat flux, control of the vacuum in
the loop, and pumping cavitations must be taken into account,
which makes two-phase heat exchanger less attractive for power
electronics [27], [28].
IV. THERMAL INERTIA VERSUS COOLING EFFECTIVENESS
The thermal loss in a device is defined as the average energy
dissipated over a pre-defined period of time. If one considers
the three-phase inverter in Fig. 1, and plots the losses of one
IGBT versus the time, the first approximation to consider is the
averaging period. Depending on the phenomena of interrest, the
average losses can be computed over:
1) the switching period (few hundred microseconds);
2) the inverter output period (few milliseconds);
3) the load cycling period (few seconds).
Regarding failure modes that are usually considered in power
electronics (wire bonds lift-off, semiconductor or substrate
soldering fatigue, peak temperature), averaging the losses over
the inverter output period is sufficient. As a study case, the loss
profile given in Fig. 9 is considered. It is a square profile with
an average value of Po and a duty cycle of 0.5. To simplify
the computation of the temperature response, this loss profile
is modeled by the sum of a continuous component and a
sinusoidal component.
Cooling systems are modeled according to Fig. 3, using a
parallel first order RC circuit. Then, the maximum temperature
is obtained by superposing a continuous temperature drop and
sinusoidal temperature variation
with (1)
For improved accuracy, a full harmonics model using the de-
composition in Fourier’s series of the losses can replace this
approximation. For each harmonic, the corresponding temper-
ature drop is calculated using the thermal impedance value at
that frequency. In electrical engineering the resistance and the
capacitance can vary with the frequency (variable permittivity,
skin and proximity effects), while thermal resistance and capaci-
tance, for the considered frequency range, are constant, allowing
the decomposition in Fourier series
(2)
MEYSENC et al.: POWER ELECTRONICS COOLING EFFECTIVENESS 691

Fig. 8. Two-phase integrated heat exchanger cooling a single IGBT chip and comparison between measured and computed heat exchange coefficients.

TABLE III
TYPICAL THERMAL RESISTANCE AND THERMAL CAPACITANCE PER
cm FOR DIFFERENT COOLING SYSTEMS

Fig. 9. Typical normalized loss profile in an IGBT of an inverter driving a

cycling load.

The temperature rise versus the time period of the square losses
is computed for several cooling systems given in Table III and
is plotted in Fig. 10. Values are normalized per cm of IGBT
active area. It is interesting to note that despite a higher thermal
resistance (twice), the liquid cooled plate has almost the same
performance of a high effectiveness integrated micro heat ex-
changer when the period of the losses is around 10 s.
Regarding air-cooled systems, natural convection cooling
presents lots of advantages. The implementation of such system
does not require too much design effort or mechanical com-
ponents and there is little maintenance required. However,
cooling effectiveness is limited and for a better utilization of the
semiconductor, most of the time, a fan is installed to enhance
the convective heat transfer. This additional effort and cost are
compensated by the semiconductors controlling more power.
However, under load cycling conditions, depending on the
load variation frequency, the gain might not be as high as ex-
pected compared to the thermal resistance alone (Table IV). Fig. 10. Normalized peak temperature (1T =P ) versus the period of a
square wave losses excitation.
For a load cycling period around 800s, junction temperature
obtained with a forced convection cooling system is only 25%
lower than the junction temperature obtained with a natural con- At the design stage of a load cycling application, it is very
vection system, although, the forced convection thermal resis- important to consider the load variation of frequency before
tance is almost two times smaller. choosing the cooling system.
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TABLE IV
COMPARISON OF NORMALIZED PEAK TEMPERATURE AND THERMAL
RESISTANCE FOR NATURAL CONVECTION AND FORCED CONVECTION
Fig. 11. Position of cooling system corner frequency versus losses spectrum.
Depending on the relative position of the corner frequency of
the cooling system versus the losses frequency spec-
trum, loss variations may or may not be damped. The damping
of the junction temperature variation can result in similar power
being handled by the semiconductor without the extra cost of
a lower thermal resistance cooling system. In that respect, the
position of the first harmonic regarding the corner frequency of
the cooling system indicates if the temperature variation will be
damped or not by the cooling system.
As an example, Fig. 11 shows the position of the losses first
harmonic versus corner frequency of two different cooling sys-
tems. Both yield similar maximum junction temperatures de-
spite very different thermal resistances. The low effectiveness
cooling system will fully damp the load variation while the ef-
ficient cooling system will not damp them at all.
In this particular case, extra cost and effort for a more effec-
tive cooling system does not pay back. Moreover, despite similar
maximal junction temperatures, the aging of the devices will be
faster due to larger temperature excursions (Table II).
V. CONCLUSION
To reduce cost of power electronics equipment, designers try
to increase the effectiveness of the cooling to get more power
out of the devices. However, increasing the cooling effective-
ness reduces the thermal inertia. Consequently, when the load
is cycling, on one hand, the average temperature over the cycle
decreases, but on the other hand, the temperature variation
around the average value increases. This is very important
when the cooling is integrated to the device. Significantly lower
thermal resistance can be achieved, but due to the low mass
of the system, the loss variations are not filtered and junction
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 20, NO. 3, MAY 2005
temperature varies significantly around its average value. Such
temperature variation greatly increases stress in the packaging
of the device (wire bonds, soldering fatigue, etc). The integra-
tion of the cooling then is not of much interest and standard
cooling systems (liquid cooled plate, heatpipe, etc) display
the same level of performance. When the load is non cyclic
or when the cycle period is such that even standard cooling
solution does not smooth the temperature out, power integration
becomes very attractive. As explained in Fig. 2, improving
the cooling effectiveness can significantly increase the output
current of an inverter. This allows significant cost reduction of
equipment and justifies all the research and development effort
made toward integrated cooling. Today, both customers and
manufacturers are becoming familiar with integrated cooling
and power integration, and the acceptance of these solutions
will grow quickly over the coming years. There is still a lot
of work to adapt the semiconductor industry manufacturing
processes, to reach acceptable production yield and quality,
but these obstacles will be surmounted and power devices with
integrated cooling will become more common like today’s
devices.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank Dr. S. Gunturi for his suggestions
and the help he provided for the correction of this work.
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693
Luc Meysenc (M’01) received the M.S. degree in
electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree from
the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble,
Grenoble, France, in 1995 and 1998, respectively.
He was with Alstom Transport SA for three years,
where he was in charge of the Power Electronics
Thermal Laboratory and managing a research team
dealing with power integration. In December 2000,
he joined ABB Corporate Research, Baden-Dättwil,
Switzerland, where he is currently leading a research
group dealing power electronics systems and appli-
cations. His field of interest covers thermal management, semiconductors and
power integration, converter design for industry and transport applications. He
is the owner of several patents in the field of power electronics.
Dr. Meysenc is a Member of the IEEE Industry Application Society.
Mervi Jylhäkallio received the M.S. degree in me-
chanical engineering from the Helsinki University of
Technology (HUT), Espoo, Finland, in 2000.
From 2000 to 2003, she was a Design Engineer
and a Specialist with ABB. The work was related to
thermal management and reliability of LV ac drives.
Presently, she is a Scientist in the Corporate Research
Centre of ABB, Baden-Dättwil, Switzerland, where
her area of research is thermal management of power
electronics.
Peter Barbosa (M’95) received the B.S. degree in
electrical engineering from the Federal University
of Uberlandia, Brazil, in 1991 the M.S. degree from
the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil,
in 1993, and the Ph.D. degree from the Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia
Tech), Blacksburg, in 2002.
From 1993 to 1995, he was a Research Assistant at
the Institute for Power Electronics, Federal Univer-
sity of Santa Catarina, and from 2001 to 2003 he was
the Technical Director at the Center for Power Elec-
tronics Systems (CPES), Virginia Tech. Since 2003, he has been with ABB Cor-
porate Research, Baden-Dättwil, Switzerland, where he develops technology for
medium voltage drives and wind power converters.