Packaging for high temperature electronics

During the past decade or so, increasing interest in high temperature electronics has intensified. The number of high temperature applications has grown significantly, spurring the development of novel high temperature compliant technology. Leading industries, such as oil & gas and geothermal energy harvesting, are pushing the development of more robust and more reliable electronic systems further into higher temperatures. In recent years, several technology areas, e.g. electrical components and assembly methods, have shown great improvement in their high temperature performance. Now specific components, e.g. SiC devices, may be used at temperatures in excess of 500 °C and emerging packaging technologies are pushing towards 300 °C and higher.

This presentation gives a brief review of the state-of-art in field of the high temperature electronics packaging and some of its applications. It also presents results and reflections generated by the High temperature power electronics packaging (HTPEP) project. The HTPEP project focuses on development of high temperature packaging technology for high reliability applications. It also focuses on 'know-how' on the latest SiC technology for implementation into novel electronic systems. A demonstrator, housing power electronics for a brushless electric DC-motor for use in a novel autonomous well exploration tool, is under development and its general design is presented.