The influence of package thermal resistance on the EMP injection damage effect of transistors

With the thermal effects of substrate and package in mind, electrothermal simulations are performed on the transient response of transistors under the injection of electromagnetic pulses by adopting the 2-D device simulator ISE-TCAD. Simulation results show that the junction temperature inside a transistor will increase so instantly to the melting point of silicon within tens or hundreds of nanoseconds as to damage the device when the current mode second breakdown arises in the transistor for electromagnetic pulses with high power. In this case, the thermal resistance of package has little influence over the burnout time and damage energy. However, when the electromagnetic pulse has too small a power to produce the current mode second breakdown, the thermal mode second breakdown will arise in the transistor. In this case, the thermal resistance of package will have a notable effect over the burnout time and damage energy.