This paper discusses the estimation of possible device destruction inside power converters in order to predict failures by means of simulation. The study of insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) thermal destruction under short circuits is investigated. An easy experimental method is presented to estimate the temperature decay in the device from the saturation current response at low gate-to-source voltage during the cooling phase. A comparison with other classical experimental methods is given. Three one-dimensional thermal models are also studied: the first is a thermal equivalent circuit represented by series of resistance-capacitance cells; the second treats the discretized heat-diffusion equation; and the third is an analytical model developed by building an internal approximation of the heat-diffusion problem. It is shown that the critical temperature of the device just before destruction is larger than the intrinsic temperature, which is the temperature at which the semiconductor becomes intrinsic. The estimated critical temperature is above 1050 K, so it is much higher than the intrinsic temperature (/spl sim/550 K). The latter value is underestimated when multidimensional phenomena are not taken into account. The study is completed by results showing the threshold voltage and the saturation current degradation when the IGBT is submitted to a stress (repetitive short circuit).
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