Application-aware lifetime estimation of power devices

The paper proposes a methodology for lifetime estimation of power devices at given applications operating conditions. The active cycling of power devices requires huge testing-time, because the process cannot be accelerated. For this reason, most often, the manufacturers provide information about the lifetime of power devices only for a few specific operating conditions. Most of the current methods are based on the junction temperature swing, which is very difficult to be measured or estimated. Instead, we propose an approach that, based on a few measurements of lifetime at given ambient temperatures, load currents and repetitive energies, is able to make lifetime prediction at any other set of operating conditions. The validation of the method was done by performing lifetime predictions in other operating conditions than those used for fitting the prediction function (metamodel) and it has shown a maximum relative error of 20%. With the proposed methodology, lifetime estimations of power devices can be made in the space of applications operating conditions, using optimal testing resources.