Developments in Thermal Management of Power Electronics

Prof. Dr. Patrick McCluskey, Univ. of Maryland, CALCE

Prof. McCluskey is leading research on packaging, thermal management, and reliability of extreme temperature and power electronic systems in the CALCE Electronic Products and Systems Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA.

Increased power levels combined with increased packag-ing density are leading to higher heat densities in power electronic systems, especially inside the module. While new devices and packaging technologies are being intro-duced to allow operation at higher junction temperatures, heat removal is still critical to ensuring the electronics remain within a temperature range at which their perfor-mance and reliability is not degraded.

This presentation will discuss many of the thermal management techniques being proposed to address the emerging needs. New developments in these cooling technologies and an analysis of their relative cooling capabilities, will be discussed along with the relation between cooling capability and the performance and reliability of modern power electronic systems.