Monitoring the junction temperature of an IGBT through direct measurement using a fiber Bragg grating

Abstract

This paper proposes a new technique to monitor the junction temperature of an insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) through direct measurement using an optical fiber sensor mounted on the chip structure. Some features of the sensor such as electromagnetic immunity, small size and fast response time allow the identification of temperature changes generated by the energy loss during device operation. In addition to the online monitoring of the junction temperature, results show the thermal characteristics of the IGBT, which can be used to develop an accurate model to simulate the heat generated during the device conduction and switching processes.