Assembly processes commonly found in the manufacturing power modules, are not alwayscompatible with the mounting recommendations of passive components making undesirableadditional processes necessary to integrate passive components. Solutions from EPCOS, aTDK Group Company, will ease integration and enhance performance.

The need for thermal management in today’s semi-conductor devices is well documented,however until recently passive components capable of working in these harsh environmentshave not been available

 

Prepared By
David Connett
Director IC Reference Design

 

Thermistor-based Sensors.
With respect to thermal management, the solution here is to use an assembly process that isalready widely used within the semiconductor manufacturing industry itself:

NTC Chips
A wafer-based technology has been used for many years inmanufacturing process of EPCOS mini-sensors (Fig. 1). The advantageof this technology versus SMD devices or disks is that the electricalproperties are determined within the manufacturing process. Thanks tothe extremely precise dicing process SMD used to cut the NTCthermistors from the wafer at the desired resistance extremely tighttolerances can also be realized (Fig. 2).

 

Rated Temperature
However, the major advantage that is especially beneficial for the semiconductor industry is thatthe dicing geometry is based on the resistance measurement of the wafer at 100 °C.

Terminations
The terminations of the chip surface can be adapted to the mating surfaces with a silverelectrode or gold if this is more desirable for the wire bonding process. Alternative materials arecurrently under investigation to facilitate emerging bonding processes and connectiontechnologies.

Embedding Processes
Besides new sintering processes for fixing the semiconductor dies to the DCB (direct copperbond), solder processes up to 400 °C are still used for many power modules. Thanks to thetechnology for high temperature leaded EPCOS NTCs, the wafer chips exhibit very low drift inresistance and B value characteristics (<1% change) during tests with standard solderingprofiles simulating connection processes.

Summary
The accuracy of NTC thermistors coupled with assembly processes already commonly found inthe manufacturing plants of IGBT modules makes the NTC the ideal component for embeddedtemperature sensing in power electronic modules.

 

 

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Companies Website:
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