Assessment of the Trench IGBT reliability: low temperature experimental characterization

The purpose of this study is an assessment of the Trench IGBT reliability at low temperature under static and dynamic operations by the aim of intensive measurements. The analysis of the Trench IGBT behaviour in these conditions is dedicated to the HEV applications. One question can be raised in case of the use of HEV in countries where during winter the temperature drops down −50 °C or less: are Trench IGBT strongly affected by the low temperature environment? In this paper, we present experimental results under various test conditions (temperature, gate resistance, voltage and current) to give an understanding of the device behaviour by focusing on the device current and voltage waveforms and the power losses.