TIME-DEPENDENT DIELECTRIC BREAKDOWN CHARACTERIZATION OF A HIGH VOLTAGE CAPACITOR

Abstract

NXP Semiconductors Business Unit (BU) Automotive is a corporate organization that provides design technology for the automotive product creation process. The assignment for this internship is to create a high voltage Time-dependent Dielectric Breakdown (TDDB) measurements setup for testing the high voltage capacitors inside galvanic isolation. The project starts with designing the schematic, selecting the right component and doing PCB layout for the measurement setup, adapting the software for the automation, and also doing TDDB measurement on the capacitor. From the TDDB measurement, it is expected we will be able to predict the reliability and lifetime of these capacitors. The lifetime of this capacitor is important, due to this product will be applied in car which requires a long lifetime. From the results of investigating the measurement, breakdown value for negative voltage is smaller than positive voltage. The pads of the package have a sharp point (like a needle) which involved a strong electric field at this point. Tiling and floating metal 3 make the breakdown voltage become smaller. This is because tiling is pieces of metal which reduce the total thickness of inter metal dielectric. Failure analysis shows the damage always happen at the sharp corner, due to sharp electric field in this area. 1,6mm on PCB board wire spacing is too small for high voltage breakdown measurements above 1,6kV. Keywords : TDDB, capacitor, reliability, failure, lifetime