978-1-4244-2123-7/08/$35.

00 2008 IEEE 24th IEEE SEMI-THERM Symposium

191
Transient Measurement of the Junction-To-Case Thermal Resistance
Using Structure Functions: Chances and Limits

Dirk Schweitzer, Heinz Pape, and Liu Chen
Infineon Technologies AG
Am Campeon 1-12, 85579 Neubiberg
dirk.schweitzer@infineon.com

Abstract
The accurate and reproducible measurement of the
junction-to-case thermal resistance Rth-JC of power
semiconductor devices is far from trivial. In the recent time
several new approaches to measure the Rth-JC have been
suggested, among them transient measurements with different
interface materials between the package and a heat-sink which
allow identifying the Rth-JC in the structure function of the
heat flow path. This paper shows that numerical effects
during the calculation of the structure function as well as 3D
heat spreading have a big influence on the structure function
which makes it often difficult to determine the Rth-JC. Finite
element simulations can provide a clue to identify this value
in the structure function. The theoretical findings are applied
to and demonstrated for actual measurements and the new
approach is compared to the traditional method (involving a
thermo-couple measurement of the case temperature) with
respect to accuracy and reproducibility. Finally an alternative
approach to determining the Rth-JC from transient dual-
interface measurements, which is not based on structure
functions, is presented.
Keywords
Junction-to-case thermal resistance, power semiconductor
devices, thermal transient measurement, structure function.
1. Introduction
Due to the ever increasing power dissipation levels of
power semiconductors a low junction-to-case thermal
resistance Rth-JC is regarded as more and more important.
For devices operating near the thermal limit it is no longer
sufficient to state just an upper limit for the Rth-JC value and
a low Rth-JC is a competitive advantage for the
semiconductor manufacturer. On the other hand it must be
ensured that the data-sheet Rth-JC value doesnt
underestimate the real value. Accurate and reproducible
methods to measure the Rth-JC are required. Unfortunately
these requirements are not easy to meet, which is reflected
also by the fact that to date no JEDEC standard for the
measurement of Rth-JC has been defined. The traditional
measurement method follows the definition of Rth-JC in
JESD51-1 [1]:
Thermal resistance, junction-to-case: The thermal
resistance from the operating portion of a semiconductor
device to outside surface of the package (case) closest to the
chip mounting area when that same surface is properly heat
sunk so as to minimize temperature variation across that
surface.
The traditional method thus requires the measurement of
the junction temperature T
J
, the case temperature T
C
, and the
power dissipation P. The junction-to-case thermal resistance
is calculated using:

P
T T
R
C J
JC th

(1)
Though widely accepted it should be noted that, strictly
speaking, eq. (1) is not even well-defined. Neither junction
nor case temperature are truly uniform in the chip and case
area respectively. It is not exactly specified whether T
J
and T
C

refer to the maximum or to some average values of the
temperature distributions on chip and package surface.
Besides the ambiguities of this definition, it involves the
difficulty to accurately measure the package case temperature
while it is in close contact with a heat sink. A hole or groove
in the heat sink must be provided for the thermocouple wires;
this however will distort the temperature field and therefore
have an impact on the results. Furthermore it is difficult to
ensure that the thermocouple actually measures the case
temperature and not the temperature of the heat-sink or some
average value in between. Although the reproducibility of
results obtained with the same measurement set-up is
satisfactory meticulous mounting of thermocouple and
device provided different set-ups are likely to produce
deviant Rth-JC values.
To overcome these problems, transient measurement
methods have been proposed, e.g. by Siegal [2] who
suggested to evaluate the heating curve. While in [2] the
problem of determining the thermal interface resistance
between package and heat sink remains unsolved, Szabo et al.
presented a method to identify the Rth-JC comparing the
structure functions obtained from transient measurements
with different interface layers between package and heat sink
[3] [4]. The latter approach allows in principle to distinguish
between the Rth-JC of the package and the thermal interface
resistance. We have applied this method with some
modifications to measure the Rth-JC of about three dozen
Infineon power semiconductor devices with different chip
sizes in different packages. Herein we give an account on the
chances but also on the limits of the structure function
approach. The paper is organized as follows: First the
determination of the Rth-JC using structure functions is
explained by means of a simple example, the one-dimensional
heat-flow through a layered structure. The same example
serves as a benchmark to investigate the purely numerical
effects that arise when the structure function is computed
from the Zth-curve by numerical deconvolution. In the
following section the influence of 3D effects such as heat-

Schweitzer et al., Transient Measurement of Junction to Case

24th IEEE SEMI-THERM Symposium

spreading is investigated by Finite Element simulations. The
identification of the Rth-JC is demonstrated for some
measured structure functions and compared to results
obtained with the traditional method, as well as to an
alternative evaluation method which is presented in the last
section.
2. Structure Function of the one-dimensional heat flow
path
The use of the structure-function, previously known as
Protonotarios-Wing function in the theory of non-uniform
RC-lines [5], to analyze the heat-flow path has first been
suggested by Szekely et al. [6] [7]. The cumulative structure-
function C
th
(R
th
) is the cumulative thermal capacitance C
th

as a function of the cumulative thermal resistance R
th
along
this path. The differential structure-function S(R
th
), often
being referred to shortly as structure-function, is the
derivative of the cumulative structure-function:

=
th
th
th
dR
dC
R S ) (
(2)
If the heat-flow path is essentially one-dimensional, as is
the case for thermally enhanced semiconductor packages with
a heat-slug or exposed die-pad, the structure function can
provide a map of the heat-flow path which allows identifying
partial thermal resistances related to the physical structure.
Herein we use only the differential structure function since it
shows details of structure more clearly.
Figure 1 depicts a rod which shall be heated uniformly on
the left side and be in contact with a heat sink on the right
side. All other sides are adiabatic, ensuring a perfectly one-
dimensional heat-flow along the rod. Different hatching
patterns mark regions of different materials. If the rod is
divided into many slices of width x, each slice can be
represented by one RC stage in a thermally equivalent Cauer
network as shown in figure 1. In the continuous limit x 0
the heat-flow path is represented by an infinite number of RC
stages with infinitesimal dC
th
and dR
th
values.




Figure 1: Representation of the rod by RC stages.

Since the capacitance of a dx wide slice is dC
th
= cAdx
and the resistance of this slice is dR
th
= dx / (A), the value of
the (differential) structure function is

2
) ( A c
dR
dC
R S
th
th
th
= =

, (3)
being the density, c the specific heat, and the thermal
conductivity of the material in this slice. A denotes the cross
sectional area of the rod. A heat-slug device in contact with a
water cooled heat-sink might be modeled by such a one-
dimensional layered structure as defined in table 1.
Layer Thickness Material Properties
Chip
4.5x5.7
mm
2

205 m Silicon
= 148 W/mK
= 2.33 g/cm
3

c = 0.7 J/gK
Die Attach 50 m Solder
= 30 W/mK
= 11.17 g/cm
3
c = 0.15 J/gK
Heat-slug
(Leadframe)
1.27 mm Copper
= 350 W/mK
= 8.89 g/cm
3

c = 0.38 J/gK
Thermal
Grease
= 1.2 W/mK
= 2.5 g/cm
3

c = 0.7 J/gK
Thermal
Interface
Material
(TIM)
30 m
Liquid
Metal
= 80 W/mK
= 6.0 g/cm
3

c = 0.38 J/gK
Copper
cold-plate
3.0 mm Copper
= 350 W/mK
= 8.89 g/cm
3

c = 0.38 J/gK
Ideal heat sink (i.e. flowing water)
=
c =
Table 1: Layer stack model for a heat-slug device in contact
with a heat-sink.
Figure 2 shows the differential structure-functions for this
layer stack calculated using eq. (3). Comparing the structure-
functions for two different thermal interface materials (TIM),
in this example thermal grease and liquid metal (a Gallium-
Indium-Tin alloy which is liquid at room temperature), it is
possible to identify the boundary between heat-slug and TIM.
The junction-to-case thermal resistance is equal to the
cumulative resistance R
th
at the point of separation of the two
structure functions.
0.001
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
0 0.5 1 1.5 2

Figure 2: Structure functions of the one-dimensional layer
stack model (table 1) for liquid metal and thermal grease
interface.
This is in principle the approach presented in [3] and [4]:
The Rth-JC is determined by comparison of the structure-
functions obtained with and without an additional ceramic
plate between device and heat sink. However this puts the
expected point of separation at the grease/heat-sink boundary
rather than at the package/grease boundary (see figure 3), i.e.
uniform
heating
ideal
heat-
sink
x
R
th
[K/W]
S

[
W
2
s
/
K
2
]

Point of separation:
Rth-JC = 0.26 K/W
S
o
l
d
e
r

C
h
i
p

H
e
a
t

s
l
u
g

L
i
q
u
i
d

M
e
t
a
l

H
e
a
t

s
i
n
k

H
e
a
t

s
i
n
k

L
i
q
u
i
d

m
e
t
a
l

c
u
r
v
e

T
h
e
r
m
a
l

g
r
e
a
s
e

c
u
r
v
e

Thermal grease

Schweitzer et al., Transient Measurement of Junction to Case

24th IEEE SEMI-THERM Symposium

the result is likely to be influenced by the thermal grease layer
as well. We therefore suggest to perform each measurement
with a single but different (with respect to the product c)
TIM layer. It is a good idea to use no TIM at all for one
measurement since the air in the microscopic gap due to the
surface roughness has a very small c value which ensures a
clear separation of the structure functions.


Figure 3: Determination of the Rth-JC comparing two
transient measurements with and without ceramics interface
as presented in [3] and [4].
3. Calculation of the structure function by numerical
deconvolution
The structure function can not be directly measured but
must be computed from the unit power step temperature
response Z
th
(t). This transformation involves several steps
(figure 4). For a thorough introduction to the calculation of
the structure function the reader is referred to [7] and [8].
Herein the algorithm can be only briefly outlined. First, the
time-constant spectrum R(z) is computed by numerical
deconvolution. If z denotes the logarithmic time z = ln(t) and
a(z) the unit step response as a function of z (i.e. a(ln t) =
Z
th
(t)) the following equation holds true (see e.g. [8]):

) ( ) ( z w z R
dz
da
=

with (4)
)) exp( exp( ) ( z z z w = ,
i.e. the time-constant spectrum R(z) can be computed by
deconvolution of the time derivative da(z)/dz with the
function w(z). By discretization of the time-constant spectrum
one obtains a thermally equivalent Foster RC-network which
in the next step is transformed into a Cauer RC-network. The
cumulative thermal capacitance of the Cauer ladder plotted
vs. its cumulative thermal resistance approximates the
cumulative structure function. The finer the discretization of
the time-constant spectrum, the larger the number of RC-
stages, and the better the cumulative structure function is
approximated. From the numerical point of view,
deconvolution belongs to the most critical problems. It is a so
called ill-posed problem, which means that many different
functions R(z) solve the convolution equation (4) within the
allowed error bounds. Furthermore the numerical solution is
extremely sensitive to noise in the input data. Even
quantization effects due to the finite-length numeric
representation of numbers can cause oscillations in the result.
To obtain a meaningful result, noise filtering of the input
da/dz prior to deconvolution is necessary; this however results
in a loss of resolution in the time constant spectrum and in the
subsequently derived structure function.









Figure 4: Schematic view of the transformation of the Zth
curve into a Cauer-model.
An experiment shows the impact of these numerical
effects on the shape of the structure function obtained by
deconvolution. Using the layer stack model with strictly one-
dimensional heat-flow from the previous section as a
benchmark, the influence of 3D effects such as heat spreading
can be ruled out. For the layers defined in table 1 the Zth-
curves have been computed by finite element simulation
(figure 5). To minimize the discretization error of the FE
simulation, time step size and grid size have been diminished
until the solution remained constant. The Zth-curves were
then converted to (differential) structure-functions [9].



Figure 5: Finite element model of the layer stack. Uniform
power distribution on the left side, constant temperature on
the right side, and adiabatic boundary conditions on all other
sides ensure a perfectly 1-dimensional heat-flow.
In figure 6 the structure-functions obtained by decon-
volution are compared to the analytical structure-functions
(a)
(b)
Uniform
heating
Constant
temperature
boundary
condition
Chip
Leadframe Copper cold-plate
TIM Die Attach
z
a
(
z
)

z
z
d
a
/
d
z

R
(
z
)

Measured Zth-curve
Derivative of the Zth-curve
Time constant spectrum
Foster RC-network
Cauer RC-network
Numerical derivation
Filtering
Numerical deconvolution
Discretization
Foster to Cauer transformation


Schweitzer et al., Transient Measurement of Junction to Case

24th IEEE SEMI-THERM Symposium

from figure 2 which were derived directly from geometry and
material parameters. The deconvoluted structure functions are
extremely blurred versions of the true ones. Finer details such
as the narrow gap caused by the liquid metal interface layer
are completely invisible. Oscillations appear in the region of
the chip which have no physical meaning at all. Due to the
distortions the deconvoluted structure functions separate
already at R
th
= 0.2 K/W which is about 23% lower than the
actual value Rth-JC = 0.26 K/W. The authors in [3] and [4]
therefore recommend using the inflexion point after the point
of separation to identify the Rth-JC which seems to be more
close to the true value. However, as will be shown later on, it
is in many cases difficult or even impossible to identify this
inflexion point.
0.001
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8

Figure 6: Comparison of deconvoluted and true structure-
functions.
4. Influence of heat spreading
So far only one-dimensional heat flow and the purely
numerical artifacts of the structure-functions caused by
deconvolution have been discussed. In a real semiconductor
device however, even when perfectly heat sunk, the heat flow
is never one-dimensional. Although power packages provide
a preferred heat-flow path through chip, die-attach, and heat-
slug or exposed pad to the outside, the heat will always spread
in all directions. Most of the heat spreading occurs in the well
conducting structures which are in this case the chip and the
die-pad. The amount of spreading depends on the ratios of
active chip-area to total chip-area and chip size to die-pad size
as well as on the thickness of chip and die-pad. Since most of
the measurements in this study have been conducted on
MOSFETs of which almost the whole die-area was heated,
the influence of heat spreading in the chip is not further
investigated herein. For the identification of the Rth-JC in the
structure-function the influence of heat-spreading in the chip
is of minor importance anyway. Using simplified 3D-FE
models (bond-wires and leads have been neglected) of a TO-
style package, the Zth-curves have been simulated for
different chip sizes. Material parameters and thicknesses of all
layers in this model remained the same as for the one-
dimensional structure (table 1). The size of the heat-slug was
8.3 x 7.5 x 1.27 mm
3
in all simulations. With the same FE
models we performed also steady-state simulations with fixed
case temperature T
C
in order to compute the Rth-JC according
to formula (1), using the maximum steady-state chip
temperature for T
J
(figure 7).

Figure 7: Simplified FE model of the TO style package (cross
section)
Figures 8a and 8b show the structure functions obtained
from the simulated Zth-curves for a big chip ( 25mm
2
) and a
small chip ( 2 mm
2
). The corresponding Rth-JC values
obtained by steady-state simulation are also indicated. In both
cases the structure functions have been computed for three
different TIMs between package and heat-sink: (I) 30m
thermal grease and 0.8 mm ceramic plate (as in figure 3b), (II)
30m thermal grease only (as in figure 3a), and (III) 30m
liquid metal.
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
1000
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
Thermal grease (30um) & ceramic
Thermal grease (30um)
Liquid metal (30um)

Figure 8a: Simulated structure functions for TO263 package
with big chip (25 mm
2
).
Whereas for the big chip a leadframe peak can be
identified (figure 8a), this is not possible for the small chip
(figure 8b). The disappearance of the leadframe peak for
smaller chip sizes has two reasons: First the cross-sectional
area of the heat-flow path becomes smaller; i.e. the thermal
resistance of the heat-slug increases, which translates into a
broadening of the leadframe peak in the structure function.
The second reason is that due to the spreading of the heat
inside the heat-slug the further trend of the structure-function
is determined by a superposition of the lateral heat-flow
inside the heat-slug and the heat-flow that enters straight into
the thermal grease layer. This means that the subsequent
valley of the thermal grease layer will less pronounced than in
case of a large chip for which a bigger portion of the heat-
flow is unidirectional.
R
th
[K/W]
S

[
W
2
s
/
K
2
]

L
i
q
u
i
d

m
e
t
a
l

c
u
r
v
e
s

Thermal grease
curves
true strf.
deconv. strf.
deconv. strf.
true strf.
T
J
K
Fixed case temperature T
C

I II III
I
II
III
R
th
[K/W]
S

[
W
2
s
/
K
2
]

Inflexion points
following the
separation of the
curves with &
without ceramics
Lead-
frame
Steady-state simulation:
Rth-JC = 0.25 K/W

Schweitzer et al., Transient Measurement of Junction to Case

24th IEEE SEMI-THERM Symposium

0.0001
0.001
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
1000
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
Thermal grease (30um) & ceramic
Thermal grease (30um)
Liquid metal (30um)

Figure 8b: Simulated structure functions for TO263 package
with small chip (2 mm
2
).
The early separation of the structure functions due to
deconvolution artifacts can be seen quite clearly: the liquid
metal curve (III) diverges from curves (I) and (II) well before
the expected Rth-JC. Curves (I) and (II) diverge later, since
the layer next to the leadframe is thermal grease in both cases.
Their point of separation seems to coincide better with the
correct Rth-JC value but this depends of course on
thickness and material properties of the grease and might be
wrong in other cases. At least for the big chip the steady-state
Rth-JC value is marked by a local minimum of curves (I) and
(II) we therefore decided to use this point for the
identification of the Rth-JC in the measured structure
functions. Unfortunately this rule cannot be applied to devices
with small chips since for these the leadframe peak is not
visible. Instead the Rth-JC is marked less clearly (in the
normal-log plot) by a transition of the structure function from
(almost) linear to concave curvature. The inflexion point after
the separation of the two structure functions with (I) and
without (II) ceramics (figure 8a) however includes the
thermal resistance of the thermal grease and therefore is not
suitable for the identification of the Rth-JC.
5. Examples
The theoretical findings from the previous sections shall
now be applied to and demonstrated with actual measure-
ments. The thermal transient tester [10] used for the
measurements presented herein allows to measure a whole
heating or cooling curve on the fly with high time- and
temperature- resolution and high signal to noise ratio. The
latter is essential for the subsequent transformation of the
measured Zth-curves into structure functions. We have tested
the structure-function based Rth-JC measurement approach
for about three dozen types of power semiconductor devices
in different TO- and DSO-style packages and with different
chip sizes. Most of the devices were MOSFETs. Using the
substrate diode both for heating and sensing provided a
simple way to record the cooling curves. During
measurements the devices were pressed against a water-
cooled copper heat-sink, by a spring fixture ensuring constant
force. After heating the device with a power of about 6W
until thermal equilibrium was attained, the power was
switched off and the cooling curve has been recorded for 100s
using a constant sensing current of 10mA. A variety of
different thermal interface materials between device and heat-
sink has been tested, from liquid-metal to thermal grease to
no interface material at all.
Figures 9a and 9b show some examples of structure
functions obtained for two power MOSFETs in TO263
packages with a big and a small chip. With each device
several measurements have been performed applying thermal
grease & ceramic (I), thermal grease only (II), liquid-metal
(III), and no thermal interface material at all (IV) between
package and cold-plate.
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
1000
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
Thermal grease & ceramic
Thermal grease
Liquid metal
Without TIM

Figure 9a: Measured structure functions for TO263 package
with big chip.
0.0001
0.001
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
1000
0 1 2 3 4 5
Thermal grease & ceramic
Thermal grease
Liquid metal
Without TIM

Figure 9b: Measured structure functions for TO263 package
with small chip.
Qualitatively the results correspond to the simulations in
section 4. However additional peaks appear in the region of
the leadframe, probably caused by noise in the measurement.
Still the points of separation of the different structure
functions provide a good clue where to look for the Rth-JC. It
is hardly possible to identify the inflexion points in this area.
For the big chip (figure 9a) the minimum of the thermal
grease curve (II) points at Rth-JC = 0.305 0.04 K/W, based
I II III
R
th
[K/W]
S

[
W
2
s
/
K
2
]

I
II
III
Lead-
frame
Steady-state simulation:
Rth-JC = 2.4 K/W
Lead-
frame
Rth-JC = 3.05 0.12 K/W
Rth-JC = 0.305 0.04 K/W
Lead-
frame
I II III IV
I II III IV
I
II
III
IV
I
II
III
IV
S

[
W
2
s
/
K
2
]

S

[
W
2
s
/
K
2
]

R
th
[K/W]
R
th
[K/W]
Inflexion point

Schweitzer et al., Transient Measurement of Junction to Case

24th IEEE SEMI-THERM Symposium

on the findings of the previous section. The error bounds of
0.04 K/W (13%) should include the domain of uncertainty
associated with the somewhat subjective evaluation of the
curves. Using two different types of thermal grease (no-name
product with estimated thermal conductivity 1 W/mK and
silver-filled paste Arctic-Silver with thermal conductivity 8
W/mK) didnt change the position of this minimum. However
if the thermal conductivity of the thermal interface material is
extremely high (as in the case of liquid metal) an almost
perfect thermal contact between package and heat-sink (both
copper) is established and the package/heat-sink boundary
becomes invisible in the structure function. For that reason
liquid-metal or any other material with extremely high
thermal conductivity is not suited for the structure function
based Rth-JC measurement. In case of the small chip (figure
9b), the linear-to-concave transition (visible in curves (I) and
(IV)) is used to determine the Rth-JC = 3.05 0.12 K/W (
4%). Again we are aware of the fact, that the evaluation of the
structure function is subjective to some degree, but the
possible deviations should not exceed the 4% error bounds
in this case.
We have measured the Rth-JC of exactly the same devices
using the traditional method as described in the introduction.
For that purpose we used the Rth-JC measurement equipment
of two different thermal labs, referred to herein as set-up 1
and set-up 2. With set-up 1 we repeated each measurement
several times (disassembling and reassembling the test fixture
between measurements) which allowed us to compute also the
variance. Table 2 shows the results for the two MOSFETs.

Rth-JC measured using
Traditional method Chip Structure-
function
Set-up 1 Set-up 2
Small 3.05 0.12 2.93 0.02 3.19
Big 0.305 0.04 0.47 0.07 0.35
Table 2: Rth-JC values obtained with the structure function
and the traditional method.
Besides the two examples shown in table 2 we measured
the Rth-JC of many more devices with different chip sizes. In
most cases the structure-function evaluation of the dual-
interface measurements produced a lower Rth-JC value than
the traditional method. Since the true Rth-JC of these
devices is unknown, it is a-priori not possible to decide which
values are correct. Therefore we compared the measurements
also to FE simulations of the devices with a fixed temperature
boundary condition at package case. Using the nominal die
attach thickness 66% we computed an upper and a lower
limit for the expected Rth-JC values. While almost all
structure function results were within the simulated range the
thermocouple-measurement produced considerably more
outliers. The sometimes quite large deviations between set-up
1 and set-up 2 (e.g. 34% for the big chip device in table 2)
confirm the known problems of reproducibility with the
traditional method so that altogether the structure function
evaluation results seem to be more reliable.

6. Alternative evaluation without using structure
functions
Since the true structure function can be restored only
imperfectly from a measured Zth curve and since the
numerical artifacts due to this transformation make a precise
determination of the Rth-JC at least difficult, we investigated
other possibilities to evaluate the dual interface
measurements. Figure 10a shows two Zth curves of a
MOSFET in a TO263 package the small chip device in
table 2 , which have been measured with and without
thermal grease between the heat-slug of the package and a
water-cooled cold-plate.
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5
0.00001 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 10 100
Zth without thermal grease
Zth with thermal grease

Figure 10a: Measured Z
th
curves for TO263 package with
small chip with & without thermal grease.
A seemingly apparent approach would be to identify the
Rth-JC of this device as the Z
th
(t
s
) value at the point of time t
s

when the two curves start to separate. However the gap
between the two curves widens gradually over a range of time
and there is no well-defined point of separation. In figure 10b
the distance |Z
th
(t)| between the two curves has been plotted
vs. Z
th
(t) of the thermal grease curve. The Rth-JC obtained by
this method depends strongly on the somewhat arbitrary
choice of the distance for which the curves are still regarded
as equal.
0
0,05
0,1
0,15
0,2
0,25
0,3
0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4

Figure 10b: Distance of the curves in figure 10a vs. Z
th
(t).
Looking at the derivatives da/dz, with a(z) = Z
th
(t) and z =
ln(t), instead of the Zth curves, the point of separation can be
identified more easily (figure 11a). This is visible even better
in figure 11b, where the distance |(da/dz)| is plotted vs. Z
th
.
Z
th
[K/W]
|

Z
t
h

|

[
K
/
W
]


R
th-JC
()
t [s]
Z
t
h


[
K
/
W
]

t
s

Z
th
(t
s
)

Schweitzer et al., Transient Measurement of Junction to Case

24th IEEE SEMI-THERM Symposium

0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
0.00001 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 10 100
da/dz without thermal grease
da/dz with thermal grease

Figure 11a: Derivatives da/dz of the Zth curves measured
with & without thermal grease.
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4

Figure 11b: Distance |(da/dz)| vs. Z
th
.
Here the separation point is marked by a steep increase of
|(da/dz)|, clearly distinct from the noise in the range before
the separation. Choosing equal to the maximum value of the
noise one obtains Rth-JC = 3.0 K/W which agrees very well
with the values in table 2. Unlike the evaluation of the
structure function this method does not require an error-prone
interpretation of peaks and valleys but could be performed in
an fully automated way.
7. Conclusions
The structure function evaluation of dual interface
measurements can provide a practical way to measure the
Rth-JC of power packages without the problems arising from
thermocouple measurement of the case temperature. However
the structure functions should be interpreted with utmost care
not to be misled by numerical artifacts due to which the
curves for different thermal interface materials might diverge
not exactly at the package/heat-sink interface. Unfortunately
there is no general rule for the precise determination of the
Rth-JC value since the shape of the structure function
depends strongly on the geometry of chip and package. Finite
element simulations can provide a valuable clue to the correct
evaluation as has been demonstrated herein for two examples
of a small and a big chip in a TO-style package. The
uncertainty inherent in the evaluation of the structure function
is estimated to be about 5%-15% which is still better than the
reproducibility of traditional thermocouple measurements.
On the other hand the structure function does not contain
any information which is not already inherent in the Zth curve
from which it is solely derived. Comparing the derivatives of
the Zth functions instead of the structure functions might be
an alternative way to determine the Rth-JC from dual
interface measurements which is less error-prone than the
structure function approach. Furthermore it doesnt require an
experienced user but can be performed automatically in the
evaluation software.
References
1. Electronic Industries Association, Integrated Circuit
Thermal Measurement Method Electrical Test Method,
EIA / JEDEC Standard, JESD51-1, 1995
[www.jedec.org].
2. 2. B. Siegal, "An alternative approach to junction-to-case
thermal resistance measurements", Electronics Cooling
Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 52-57, 2001.
3. P.Szabo, O.Steffens, M.Lenz, and G.Farkas, "Transient
junction-to-case thermal resistance measurement
methodology of high accuracy and high repeatability",
Proc. 10th THERMINIC, Sofia-Antipolis, pp. 145-150,
2004.
4. O.Steffens, P.Szabo, M.Lenz, and G.Farkas, "Thermal
transient characterization methodology for single-chip
and stacked structures", Proc. 21th SEMITHERM, San
Jose, pp. 313-321, 2005.
5. E.N.Protonotarios, O.Wing, "Theory of non-uniform RC
lines", IEEE Trans. On Circuit Theory, V.14, No.1, pp.
2-12, 1967.
6. V.Szekely, Tran Van Bien, "Fine structure of heat flow
path in semiconductor devices: a measurement and
identification method", Solid State Elec., Vol. 31, pp.
1363-1368, 1988.
7. MicRed, "Properties of the structure function and its use
for structure identification and for compact model
generation", www.micred.com/strfunc.html.
8. V.Szekely, "Identification of RC networks by
deconvolution: Chances and Limits", IEEE Trans. On
Circuits and Systems I: Fundamental Theory and
Applications, Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 244-258, 1998.
9. Software used for the calculation of the structure
function: MicRed, T3Ster-Master, Thermal transient
evaluation tool, v1.0, 2005.
10. Measurement equipment: MicRed, T3Ster, Thermal
transient tester.


t [s]
d
a
/
d
z

Z
th
[K/W]
|

(
d
a
/
d
z
)
|


R
th-JC
()