On-state transient electrothermal modeling of large area power components and multichip power modules

This paper presents an original method specifically intended for transient electrothermal simulation of large area power modules. A simple on-state electrical modeling is associated with a heat-flow equation solver, which is able to predict temperature distributions over the whole active area of the module by taking into account transient 3D heat diffusion effects in chips and their common package. The method permits one to predict the electrothermal behavior of large area power components or modules when the waveform of the load current is known and has been implemented in a new software tool