Recording and prediction of the accumulated damage, which will eventually lead to the failure of power electronic modules, is an aspect of high importance for power electronic systems design and, in particular, for development of Prognostic and Health Management (PHM) schemes for in-field applications. To this end, this paper presents a simple and cost-effective prognostic method for predicting the remaining useful life (RUL) of TO-247 packaged silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) subjected to power cycling experiments. The model assumes that the major failure mode is bond-wire lift-off and uses a damage accumulation scheme based on Paris’ crack law. The only inputs to the model are historical data on the average junction temperature swing and the temperaturecompensated drain-source ON-state resistance at the peak temperature of the current cycle. Using only these two input values, the model is shown to predict RUL with surprising accuracy for the range of constant current loads determining cycling conditions under which the test data series have been acquired. This work is a first step in an ongoing project towards building more elaborate prognostic schemes for RUL-determination of SiC power MOSFETs in actual working conditions, using physics-informed neural networks (PINNs).
This research is conducted within the iRel4.0 Intelligent Reliability project, which is funded by Horizon 2020 Electronics Components for European Leadership Joint Undertaking Innovation Action (H2020-ECSELJU-IA). This work is also funded by the Swedish innovation agency Vinnova, through co-funding of H2020-ECSEL-JU-IA.