Critical Analysis of Intersection-Point-Based Techniques for the Experimental Indirect Determination of Thermal Resistance in Bipolar Transistors

This paper critically reviews techniques for the experimental extraction of thermal resistance in bipolar transistors from simple DC current/voltage measurements at various backside temperatures (indirect approach). More specifically, the study focuses on methods relying on intersection points between characteristics. The techniques are applied to I-V curves obtained through PSpice simulations of an in-house transistor model incorporating nonlinear thermal effects, and their accuracy is assessed by comparing the extracted thermal resistance data with the reference formulation embedded in the model.