High Performance Cooling for Power Electronics Via Electrochemical Additive Manufacturing

The rapid adoption of electric vehicles has driven development and demand for traction inverter components. The advanced SiC and GaN devices used in these devices today have large power dissipation levels, creating challenges for maintaining optimal operating temperatures. This paper introduces the concept of an advanced liquid-cooled thermal management solution for power electronics. The component leverages a novel 3D metal printing technology called Electrochemical Additive Manufacturing (ECAM) to directly print copper cooling structures onto the ceramic substrate of the component, thereby eliminating thermal interface materials and significantly improving the thermal resistance of the system-level stack. Additionally, the use of high-surface-area, triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) structures in the liquid-cooled application to improve fin efficiency and heat transfer is demonstrated. The use of ECAM-printed cooling structures in traction inverter applications is shown to have great potential for realizing significant gains in performance, via thermal resistance improvements in the range of 60-120%.