Comparison of the thermal properties of polycrystalline diamond and aluminium nitride substrates

In this paper, a numerical comparison of the thermal performance of silicon and silicon carbide power semiconductor dies mounted on diamond and aluminum nitride substrates is presented. Detailed three-dimensional GIGA simulations predict that a 26% reduction of thermal resistance can be achieved by replacing a silicon power device with a silicon carbide counterpart. Moreover, the thermal resistance can be reduced further by 71% through replacement of the aluminum nitride substrate with diamond. The reliability of the diamond and AlN substrates was further analyzed using stress tool in Ansys.