Climatic reliability of electronics and prevention strategies

The miniaturization of electronic systems and the explosive increase in their usage has increased the humidity related reliability issues of electronic devices and components. Green transition requires extended use of electronics for broader service boundaries, while they are expected to perform efficiently. Expanded use also means increased exposure of electronic systems to harsh climatic conditions, therefore expect increased effect of climatic conditions.

This short course will focus on learning:

1. Why climatic reliability of electronics is important today?
2. Effect of climate on electronics, failure modes, and influencing factors.
3. Possible preventive measures based on Intrinsic and extrinsic method.
4. Elucidation of intrinsic methods by which making PCBA more robust.
5. Elucidation of extrinsic method by designing barrier for humidity.
6. How climate data analysis is helpful for extrinsic methods?

Dr. Rajan Ambat is currently Professor of Corrosion and Surface Engineering at Section of Materials and Surface Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark. He is also the Manager for the CELCORR/CreCon Industrial Consortium on climatic reliability of electronics at DTU and Research Manager for the Corrosion node of Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre. He has more than 15 years of expertise in the area of humidity and electronics, and developing mitigation strategies. This includes electrochemical failure mechanisms at material, component, PCBA, and systems level, PCBA cleanliness issues and humidity interaction, modelling humidity interaction with electronics and pro-actively defining solutions. Prevention and predictive strategies include intrinsic and extrinsic methods for enhancing humidity robustness of electronics systems, not only the prevention methods based on corrosion and electrochemical understanding and coatings, but also using humidity flow modelling and climate data as a source of predictability for aggressiveness, and corrosion prediction sensors for electronic corrosion. He is the Chairman for the Working Party on Corrosion reliability of electronic devices under European Federation of Corrosion and Board member, IMAPS Nordic, Europe. He has published extensively in a wide variety of topic connected to humidity and electronics and written a book entitled “Humidity and Electronics: Corrosion reliability issues and preventive measures”. He is also part of the editorial board of Corrosion Engineering Science and Technology, Frontiers in Metals and Alloys, Corrosion communications, and Advances in Materials Science and Engineering.

Life Prediction of Power Electronic Components based on Thermal Modelling

In this tutorial, after a review of the basic theory of reliability engineering, several approaches for reliability testing of power electronics components will be presented in the first part. Typical pros and cons of power cycling test setups of Silicon and Silicon Carbide devices will be discussed.

In the second part of the tutorial, loss calculation in a power electronic circuit as well as the general heat theory will be introduced first.  Afterward, the extraction of the equivalent thermal network of the real power stack will be presented.

The tutorial is concluded with an overview of the novel and promising methods for mission-profile-based prediction of Remaining Useful Life (RUL).

Francesco Iannuzzo is currently a professor of reliable power electronics at the Aalborg University, Denmark, where he is also part of CORPE, the Center of Reliable Power Electronics. His research interests are in the field of reliability of power devices, including mission-profile-based life estimation, condition monitoring, failure modeling, and testing up to MW-scale modules under extreme conditions. He is the author or co-author of more than 260 publications on journals and international conferences, three book chapters, and four patents. Besides the publication activity, over the past years, he has been contributing +20 technical seminars about reliability at first conferences as ISPSD, IRPS, EPE, ECCE, PCIM, and APEC.

Prof. Iannuzzo is a senior member of the IEEE (Industry Application Society, Reliability Society, Power Electronics Society, and Industrial Electronics Society). He currently serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Open Journal on Power Electronics, the IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics, the IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, the EPE Journal, and Elsevier Microelectronics Reliability. He is vice-chair of the IEEE IAS Power Electronic Devices and Components Committee. In 2018 he was the general chair of the 29th ESREF, the first European conference on the reliability of electronics, and has recently been appointed general chair for the EPE 2023 conference in Aalborg.

Amir Sajjad Bahman is currently an Associate Professor at the Center of Reliable Power Electronics (CORPE), Aalborg University, Denmark. His research interests include electro-thermo-mechanical modeling, packaging, and reliability of power electronic systems and components. Dr. Bahman received the B.Sc. from Iran University of Science and Technology, in 2008, the M.Sc. from the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden in 2011, and the Ph.D. from Aalborg University, Denmark, in 2015 all in electrical engineering. He was a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Arkansas, USA, in 2014. Moreover, he was with Danfoss Silicon Power, Germany in 2014 as the Thermal Design Engineer. Dr. Bahman is a senior member of the IEEE and currently serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification, and Elsevier Microelectronics Reliability.