Electrothermal analysis with generalized boundary conditions

Abstract

Electrothermal analogy allows a resistive or RC network to be used for simple and convenient thermal analysis; however, it is only valid when heat transfer is purely convective or conductive. We investigate the analogy when a chip's operating environment is not purely convective, e.g. convective atmosphere with some source of heat flux, which is typically the practical case. We mathematically show that the analogy can be extended to such an environment, but with some modifications in a resistive network.