A new thermal model for power MOSFET devices accounting for the behavior in unclamped inductive switching

The main aim of this work was the analysis of the transient thermal behavior of several typologies of power MOSFET devices. The commonly used thermal model has been applied to different device families with different breakdown voltages. The large difference between the experimental results and the simulation runs, performed with the classic approach for some kinds of devices, leads to correct the traditional mathematical thermal model and to build up a new one in which the real size of the epitaxial layer is taken into account. A new model will be shown performing a better fitting with the experimental evidence and confirming its suitability for all the proofed families of devices. The mathematical process developed to build up the model is shown, and a comparison is carried out between the measured temperatures on the device and estimation by the model. The results discussed in the paper show how the developed model allows a better fitting of the achieved model with the experimental measurements and demonstrate the suitability of the proposed approach. •We verify the suitability of traditional thermal models for power electronic devices.•We validate experimentally the results of the proposed models.•We propose and implement an enhanced model for estimating the temperature of power MOSFET in avalance operation.•We demonstrate by experimental evidence the improvement with our 2D model compared with traditional ones.