Reliability of SiC MOSFETs in the High Cycle Fatigue Regime under Fast Power Pulses

Device reliability is an important factor in application, especially in the field of electric mobility. In this paper high cycle fatigue power cycling results of SiC devices in baseplate free modules are presented. To minimize testing time, the devices were stressed with load pulses corresponding to a 50 Hz load. The reliability results are the first fatigue results for temperature swings below 30 K for SiC devices. The lifetime in the high cycle fatigue area is limited by solder fatigue for high virtual junction temperatures of 150 °C. In theory, the reliability should increase exponential since the elastic-plastic transition area is reached. The experiment revealed that the lifetime can still be described by the Coffin-Manson approach also in the high cycle fatigue area. It can be observed that the high junction temperatures weaken the stability of the solder layer, so no major lifetime increase can develop. The measured temperature data are additionally corrected by a three-dimensional (3D) simulation to ensure a validity of the results.