The Best Paper Award PCIM Europe Conference 2015 will be given to Dorothea Werber, Infineon Technologies, Germany, for her paper “A 1000A 6.5 kV Power Module Enabled by Reverse-Conducting Trench-IGBT-Technology”. The Award comprising price money and a visit to PCIM Asia 2016 will be handed over by PEE Editor Achim Scharf at PCIM's opening ceremony on Tuesday (May 19).

In Infineon’s (www.infineon.com) commonly known 6.5 kV IGBT-modules IGBT and freewheeling diode chips are assembled in parallel connection on six AlN substrates, which are mounted on an AlSiC base plate. Within the new 1000A / 6.5 kV module all former chips positions are replaced with the RCDC-chips (Reverse Conducting IGBT with Diode Control). The functionality of an IGBT-switch and a freewheeling diode is given by this single chip solution. Due to the integration into the existing module platform of high insulation modules the outer diameters as well as the pinning remain unchanged.

One of the major advantages of the RCDC technology is the significant improvement of the thermal resistances within the module (R_{th_JC}) and towards the cooler (R_{th_CH}), which allows for an increased ampacity while the junction temperature remains at 125°C. This is in contrast to previously announced 1000A / 6.5 kV modules, which rely on an increase of the junction temperature to 150°C. The reason for the improved thermal resistances is the increase of the effective Silicon area available during operation in IGBT- as well as diode-mode. While in previous 6.5 kV modules with footprint 140 mm x 190 mm 24 parallelized silicon dies are contributing to IGBT mode, now 36 RCDC chips serve for heat spreading. In the case of diode-mode the improvement is even higher due to three times more active dies in parallel compared with the common IGBT module. Since the same silicon volume is used during IGBT and free-wheeling mode the thermal coupling during IGBT- and diode-mode has to be taken more seriously into account than for standard IGBT, where the thermal coupling between the spatially separated IGBT and diode dies occurs mainly via the substrate and base plate. However, a beneficial reduction of the thermal ripple is observed, which can lead to an additional improvement of the power cycling reliability. By the means of FEM-simulation the Z_th-curves of IGBT-mode, diode-mode and the thermal coupling have been investigated with the result that the R_{th_JA} of the IGBT-mode is reduced by roughly 20 % and of the diode-mode even by roughly 50 % compared to the FZ750R65KE3 module.