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Correlating NTC-Reading and Chip-Temperature in Power Electronic Modules

In power electronic designs, the instantaneous chip temperature is of major importance to the user. In case the chip can't be accessed, additional sensors like NTCs can be used to measure a temperature that depends on the chip temperature. From this value, a chip temperature can be estimated. Determining the thermal correlation between chip temperature and sensor reading is not a trivial task. The present paper gives an insight into a basic but reliable procedure to extract the necessary information using an experimental setup. Designing a power electronic system usually starts with simulation both in electrical and thermal functionality. For the thermal simulation, the task is to determine the chip temperature as accurately as possible as this is a mayor parameter for the life time prediction. Though there is a JEDEC-standard that defines the in-situ measurement as a method of choice to capture the chip temperature, the setup to do so is difficult to handle and the test procedure can barely be implemented in an application under operation. A further possibility poses as simplified approach to estimate the chip temperature.

• 297.26 KB
• Nov 04, 2015