Feasibility Investigations on Selective Laser Melting for the Development of Microchannel Cooling in Power Electronics

The introduction of new generation semiconductor materials into power electronics brings not only performance improvements but also technological challenges for the thermal management as the urge for high temperature operating power modules and packaging systems increases. The limiting factor for the performance and application range is not anymore the chip temperatures but the restrictions of the state-of-the-art packaging systems. Especially for high power applications, the temperatures can rise to more than 200 °C at the interconnect level. In this paper, as a contribution towards the above requirements, the selective laser melting (SLM) technique has been used to fabricate a heat sink concept which would not be feasible with conventional production techniques. Here the feasibility of producing a heat sink concept with SLM based on micro-cooling technology is successfully introduced and the thermal management performance is demonstrated. The advantages mainly for the volume and weight reduction along with performance improvement are highlighted.

I. Introduction

The presence of electronic devices is continuously growing and reaching new fields of application. Furthermore, the electronic functionalization of mechanical parts widens the market for electronic devices. New applications bring new challenges for the electronic devices industry in terms of requirements such as increased complexity, functionality, miniaturization and the related raise in the level of integration and power density. Nevertheless, products not only have to fulfil the customer expectations and application related exigencies but simultaneously reach the market in time with a shortened development time as the product life cycles are steadily reduced. The production of three-dimensional (3D) electronic devices with mechanical and electrical functionalization termed as Mechatronic Integrated Devices (MID) is one of the approaches to fulfil the demand of high functional and integrated devices. A 3D-MID refers to a customized part based on a 3D substrate with integrated electronics. This is independent of the substrate material, which can vary from thermoplastics to ceramics and the production technology is not just limited to injection molding. Various additive manufacturing (AM) techniques are being presently under research to achieve enhanced system integration, 3D-flexibility, CAD-CAM based rapid customization and prototyping [1].