Power electronics are reaching the temperature limits of silicon; therefore alternative materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) are currently being explored. An all SiC 1.2 kV, 400 A dual MOSFET power module has been fabricated and tested for thermal performance. The module was designed as a dropin replacement for standard commercial modules with an integrated liquid cooling system that reduces thermal resistance. The heat sink has been experimentally tested up to 400 A (158 W/cm 2 ) showing a device temperature rise of as little as 24 °C. Thermal modeling was also performed and the results were compared to experimental data.
Thermal interface materials (TIMs) have reached values approaching the measurement uncertainty of standard ASTM D5470 based testers of approximately ±1 × 10−6 m2 K/W. This paper presents a miniature ASTM-type steady-state tester that was developed to address the resolution limits of standard testers by reducing the heat meter bar thickness and using infrared (IR) thermography to measure the temperature gradient along the heat meter bar. Thermal interfacial resistance measurements on the order of 1 × 10−6 m2 K/W with an order of magnitude improvement in the uncertainty of ±1 × 10−7 m2 K/W are demonstrated. These measurements were made on several TIMs with a thermal resistance as low as 1.14 × 10−6 m2 K/W.
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