Investigation of acoustic emission as a non-invasive method for detection of power semiconductor aging

In this paper, recording of acoustic emission during real operations is used for non-invasively detecting the aging of a power seminconductor module due to power cycling. The presented method is very simple and particularly attractive because of non-invasiveness and potential low-cost features, which can enable straightforward adoption in condition monitoring of power electronic devices. Nevertheless, a spectrum analysis is needed to process the acquired data. Experimental results show a strong correlation between acoustic emission and on-state voltage drop, which is the standard indicator of degradation in bond wires. A comparison with the results obtained with another identical module gave excellent repeatability, confirming that the method is very promising for real application.