Thermal creep and fatigue failure of the sintered silver solder in a SiC-IGBT module under power cycling

In this work, the creep samples of sintered silver were prepared by the chemical reduction method. According to the creep testing results, the Anand constitutive model was established to demonstrate the creep characteristics of sintered silver within a certain temperature range. According to the finite element electro-thermal–mechanical coupling analysis, the cyclic creep characteristics of sintered silver solder in the SiC-IGBT module under power cycling were simulated. The results shows that the sintering pressure and temperature can greatly promote the integrity of sintered silver by enhancing inert-particle bonding strength, and the established Anand model can effectively describe the creep behavior of sintered silver. The predicted results from electro-thermal–mechanical simulation were in good agreement with the power cycling testing results under the same condition. The finite element-based creep fatigue model is effective in predicting the creep fatigue life of sintered silver solders.