Electro-thermal characterization of multi-emitter power NPN transistors

Abstract

This paper presents a method to characterize the electro-thermal behavior of power NPN transistors in the presence of temperature gradients that mimic the functioning conditions of the device in circuits like linear voltage regulators. A test structure able to generate the temperature variations over the power device and a measurement setup are presented. The entire structure is then modeled in a 3D thermal simulator and used to recreate the measurement conditions and explain the measured temperature profiles.