Power electronics has progressively gained an important status in power generation, distribution, and consumption. With more than 70% of electricity processed through power electronics, recent research endeavors to improve the reliability of power electronic systems to comply with more stringent constraints on cost, safety, and availability in various applications. This paper serves to give an overview of the major aspects of reliability in power electronics and to address the future trends in this multidisciplinary research direction. The ongoing paradigm shift in reliability research is presented first. Then, the three major aspects of power electronics reliability are discussed, respectively, which cover physics-of-failure analysis of critical power electronic components, state-of-the-art design for reliability process and robustness validation, and intelligent control and condition monitoring to achieve improved reliability under operation. Finally, the challenges and opportunities for achieving more reliable power electronic systems in the future are discussed. Index Terms-Capacitors, design for reliability (DFR), insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) modules, physics-offailure (PoF), power electronics, robustness validation. I. INTRODUCTIONP OWER electronics enables efficient conversion and flexible control of electric energy by taking advantage of the innovative solutions in active and passive components, circuit topologies, control strategies, sensors, digital signal processors, and system integrations. While targets concerning efficiency of power electronic systems are within reach, the increasing reliability requirements create new challenges due to the following factors:1) mission profiles critical applications (e.g., aerospace, military, more electrical aircrafts, railway tractions, automotive, data center, and medical electronics); 2) emerging applications under harsh environment and long operation hours [e.g., onshore and offshore wind tur-Manuscript

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When compared to temperature distributions in an actual application, thermal cycling is not a complete representation of the thermal gradients found in functional electronics under power-on condition. This discrepancy is particularly severe in power electronics and it distorts the thermo-mechanical stresses experienced at the joints and interfaces of power devices. Accelerated stress tests for power electronics are therefore better conducted with accelerated power cycling experiments rather than with accelerated thermal cycling, because the power cycles simulate more closely accelerated versions of an application cycle where the junction temperature of the die rises and falls as the power is turned off and on. However, developing a power cycling test setup can be comparatively more challenging than temperature cycling test setup, because of the complex triggering circuitry and logic needed for rapid power cycling, power circuitry needed to supply the large wattage safely to the devices under test, thermal cooling system to remove the high amount of heat generated, and software/hardware to control the test setup to maintain the right operational parameters. In this study, a test setup has been developed to power cycle IGBT and bipolar semiconductor devices for accelerated durability tests. The test setup is described and the role of each hardware and software component in the test setup is elaborated. Sample test results are presented, to illustrate the capabilities of the test setup. This work adds to the state of the art of power cycling experiments and improves our understanding of ways to develop stable power cycling test setups for various kinds of applications.