2. Thermal environment of power components

Whether it's a discrete component, a module or a power IC, the heart of the power semiconductor component is the silicon chip, which has been designed to perform a well-defined switching function. However, a component cannot be operational without the chip(s) being suitably mounted on a substrate, which in turn is encapsulated in a housing. This package is then mounted in a system which determines the thermal environmental conditions of the component. In the following, we'll refer to this thermal environment as a "radiator". It's the thermal behavior of the chip-housing-radiator assembly that needs to be studied when looking at power components.