Impacts of ripple current to the loading and lifetime of power semiconductor device

Abstract

The thermal loading of power electronics devices is determined by many factors and has being a crucial design consideration because it is closely related to the reliability and cost of the converter system. In this paper the impacts of the ripple current to the loss and thermal loading, as well as reliability performances of power devices are comprehensively investigated and tested. It is concluded that the amplitude of ripple current may modify the loss and thermal loading of the power devices, especially under the conditions of converter with low power output, and thus the lifetime of devices could be disturbed.