Embedded mini-Heater Design for Power Loss Remote Measurement and Thermal Runaway Control on Power Devices for Accelerated Life Testing

This paper points out to the use of a COTS SAFe-FET in the design of an Embedded mini-Heater (EmH) addressed for Accelerated Life Tests (ALTs) on power semiconductor devices. EmH is designed to detect and control the thermal runaway on a device under test (DUT) while thermal and electrical stress are applied. The heating and sensing temperature processes are controlled by discrete PID algorithms running on a microcontroller. As results, EmH can reach a DUT heating temperature of 175°C with a temperature resolution of 0.5°C using a maximum heating power of 10.6W. Even more, due to the small size and low heating power consumption of EmH, loss power dissipation from a single DUT can be measured remotely without any electrical interface connection to detect its degradation during an ALT avoiding to interrupt the electric stress.