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Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM
Power Electronics at Fraunhofer IZM
IZM has all necessary expertise in the en-
tire development chain, from system de-
sign, packaging, thermal management,
electromagnetic compatibility, through to
reliability and damage analysis.
Electrical System & Circuit Design
Applications for power electronic compo-
nents are endless – in industrial drives, to
generate renewable energy, in transport
and more. The IZM is developing ground-
breaking solutions for demands such as:
•
High switching currents
•
High voltages
•
Very fast switching for SiC/GaN and
highspeed Si-devices
•
Mechanical stability
•
Strict EMC specifications
•
An extremely long lifetime
•
High reliability
Electromagnetic Compatibility
IZM is specialized in EMC and provides
consulting and research for all phases of
product development. Starting with basic
research into interference phenomena in
specific applications, we cover the entire
spectrum, including troubleshooting after
product delivery. We use in-house simu-
lation processes developed specifically for
frequent problems, as well as sophisticated
measurement series.
Thermal Management
The heat is dissipated from the chips
through various interfaces, thermal inter-
face materials, spreaders and substrates
before being released into the environ-
ment by a heat exchanger (cooler). All of
the specified points have to be optimized
to guarantee that the heat is removed
reliably and to meet the application’s
requirements.
Packaging
IZM has a wide area of packaging tech-
niques at its disposal:
•
Large-area solder joining; Ag sintering;
diffusion soldering/bonding
•
Heavy wire and ribbon bonding
•
Embedding technologies as well as
housing/encapsulation
•
X-ray and US microscopy, visual inspec-
tion and mechanic testing
Reliability
The damage behavior of materials and
components are carefully analyzed and
characterized in experiments; selected
material and geometry parameters can
be simulated (FEM). Technology-specif-
ic material properties are a particular fo-
cus of measurement technology at IZM.
Among other things, such properties are
the key extending the lifetime of a solder
joint or a wire bond, and for measures
that improve reliability.
Laboratories for power module and
packaging qualification
•
EMC-Lab
•
Thermal measurement and thermal/
mechanical simulation
•
Active and passive power cycling
•
Quality and reliability testing incl. com-
bined and accelerated lifetime tests
•
Material characterization: EBSD, FIB,
SEM, EDX, Nano-Indentation
Solar converter with embedded module,
Little Box Challenge
Embedded SiC-power module
Diffusion bonded layer
