Thermal characterisation of each large power module or assembly is inevitable in the
industry. Thermal transient testing provides not only generic thermal parameters but
also the root causes of potential failures. The major bottleneck in this process is
the long time needed for the calibration of a thermally sensitive parameter of the
semiconductor devices, opposed to the actual measurement time which is a few tens
of seconds. The article presents a methodology which replaces the lengthy measurement
of a parameter at many temperatures by a complete current-voltage sweep fulfilled
below a second and some calculations based on semiconductor physics. The method also
may predict the high temperature behaviour of wide band gap semiconductor components,
needed for lifetime estimation.
