Reliability enhancement with the aid of transient infrared thermal analysis of smart Power MOSFETs during short circuit operation

The usage of novel measurement techniques enhances the capabilities of researchers and power device manufacturers to understand and address reliability problems in novel Smart Power Devices. Along this line of argument, this work describes a method to improve the reliability of the smart Power MOSFET devices by design. The design optimization process involves Silicon layout, interconnections, packaging and protection strategy as well. Accurate thermal transient analyses, made possible by the unique features of a custom infrared radiometric microscope experimental setup which allows dynamic temperature detection with a bandwidth of 1 MHz over the chip area, indicated the way to minimize peak temperature and to verify the effect of the optimization. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.