Estimation of power MOSFET junction temperature during avalanche mode: Experimental tests and modelling

•Experimental and numerical procedure has been developed to estimate MOSFET’s temperature..•Low voltage MOSFET exhibits a resistive behavior during avalanche.•This behavior comes from the P body contact resistance in serial with the drain-source built in diode.•Avalanche resistance variation with temperature is poor due to the very high P type layer doping. In this paper, an experimental and numerical procedure has been developed to estimate the junction temperature of a power MOSFET when operating in avalanche mode of short duration. At first, a simplified electrothermal model proposed in literature has been recalled then we describe the experimental procedure that we have developed to extract the parameters necessary for its exploitation. The comparison between measurements and numerical simulation results of temperature and drain–source voltage shows that the proposed methodology leads to a quite accurate prediction of the MOSFET heating and drain–source voltage waveforms during avalanche mode.