Olivier's Twist Blog

While silicon is the most common element used for power semiconductors, copper is the most popular choice for conductor traces on printed circuit boards (PCBs) and ceramic substrates due to its electrical conductivity.

Electronic systems rely on efficient combination and distribution of voltages and currents from different sources. In high-power applications, such as industrial drives, renewable energy inverters, powertrains for electric vehicles and converters used in rail, energy must be channeled with minimal power losses.

In a recent Olivier’s Twist blog, the topic of Silicon Carbide semiconductor materials was discussed for future high power efficiency applications. There is also another semiconductor technology that is filling a gap in performance between Silicon and Silicon Carbide, and that is Gallium Nitride.

Dominik Pawlik explains the details about laminated busbars, the advantages and where the busbars are used.

There is currently a lot of interest for silicon carbide (SiC) as a semiconductor material because its properties make it more promising than silicon for power electronics applications.

A Quick Introduction to ROLINX® Laminated Busbar Solutions, Dominik Pawlik explains the details about laminated busbars, the advantages and where the busbars are used.

Josh Goldberg takes you to the floor of the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to take a closer look at some of the technologies that will soon be entering our lives.

In the world of electronics, heat can severely shorten the lifetime of a device. It is therefore necessary to move heat away from vital components such as chips, LEDs, and inverters to maintain optimal performance without shortening the lifetime. There are many different thermal management techniques that can be utilized by engineers depending on the devices heat density, space constraints, and cost.

A data sheet is the main source of information for design engineers to understand the overall performance of a power module. It provides a wide variety of values and diagrams but detailed background explanations on each parameter are often missing. On the other hand, a test set up cannot cover all possible applications or operating conditions and the values can vary according to the user's particular application.

I recently participated in the Battery Show in Novi, Michigan where I gave a presentation during the conference on the connection of the battery cell for electric vehicles (EV). For those of you who could not attend, here is a short summary and my observations on this subject.

Who cares about flatness? Process and application engineers do! These are not flattering words as they truly know how critical it is to understand and control the shape of one’s substrate, base plate and heat sink in order to achieve the best possible production yield and module performance. In this blog, I want to share with you some information about flatness that you may wish to consider as you design or use power modules.

Design engineers are selecting Direct Bonded Copper (DBC) and Active Metal Brazed (AMB) substrates as circuit material for bare semiconductor chips in their power modules as they efficiently dissipate the waste heat from the semiconductors and increase the lifetime of the modules. In this blog, we explain the production process for power modules and highlight the most important characteristics of the substrates at each step of this assembly process.

Nowadays the requirements for high power density, increased reliability and low inductance are not only important for busbars but also for complete inverter design. In higher-power applications such as traction, solar and wind inverters and the powertrains of electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), energy must be channeled with minimal combining and distribution loss.

Thermal management is required to achieve optimal power electronic system performance and reliability. While in operation, power semiconductor devices generate a lot of waste heat as a result of conductive and switching losses. This heat has to be dissipated from the semiconductor junction to the semiconductor package and ultimately to the ambient environment to prevent thermal runaway.

As a design engineer for power electronics systems, you require the selected power module to fulfill its electrical function as described in its data sheet and you expect this module to be reliable meaning that it should operate under given conditions, in a defined period of time and within an acceptable failure rate.