On-line condition monitoring of power semiconductors

Due to the wide use of IGBT power semiconductor modules within manifold industrial applications, analysing the ageing and lifetime of the modules is an important subject in today's power electronics. This paper focuses on a lifetime prediction based on the modules? history. Therefore, a certain set of influencing parameters has been established. Furthermore, a novel method for in-situ estimation of deterioration for common operation conditions is presented. This also includes an experimental validation by a test environment, which is described in the final section of the paper.