Accelerated Aging Platform for Prognostics of Power Electronics

To advance the field of electronics prognostics, the study of transistor fault modes and their precursors is essential. This paper reports on a platform for the aging, characterization, and scenario simulation of gate controlled power transistors. The platform supports thermal cycling, dielectric over-voltage, acute/chronic thermal stress, current overstress and application specific scenario simulation. In addition, the platform supports in- situ transistor state monitoring, including measurements of the steady-state voltages and currents, measurements of electrical transient response, measurement of thermal transients, and extrapolated semiconductor impedances, all conducted at varying gate and drain voltage levels. The aging and characterization platform consists of an acquisition and aging hardware system, an agile software architecture for experiment control and a collection of industry developed test equipment.