Short Thermal Peak Management for Electronic Devices Using Phase Change Materials

Inhalt:
Power modules can be occasionally exposed to brief power peaks causing overheating and premature failure of the semiconductor devices. In order to overcome this issue without oversizing the power module and its cooling system, this paper aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of Phase Change Materials (PCMs) integrated in the devices metal interconnection as a passive cooling system for short power transient management. Experimental tests and finite elements thermal simulations were conducted on elementary assemblies in order to validate the model and its capability to accurately predict the device temperature. Based on the high accuracy model, simulations are then performed to evaluate the impact of the heat spreading and PCMs physical properties on the device temperature. Results show that metal interconnection with large contact area with the PCM has a significant impact on the final device temperature since it allows melting of a large volume of the PCM. Otherwise, when a high volume ratio of the PCM is melted by using a low latent heat storage PCM, increasing the latter properties has a strong influence on the device temperature. The thermal conductivity of the PCM could be neglected if a good heat diffusion in the PCM volume is guaranteed by the metal structure and hence, a large panel of PCM can be selected to integrate the metal interconnection.