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An Engineer's Guide to High Reliability Components 8 To achieve high reliability in power electronics, thermal management is a necessary design focus. THERMAL MANAGEMENT for POWER ELECTRONICS Eric Boere, Field Applications Engineer at Apex Microtechnology A major trend in the electronics industry is the drive to make devices both smaller and more powerful. This increase in power density is highly desirable, but achieving it in practice presents a significant number of challenges with respect to maintaining high reliability. Higher power densities exacerbate thermal issues. No device can ever achieve 100% efficiency, so an increase in power means an increase in wasted power and thus an increase in heat generation. This impact is especially pertinent in analog power electronics, where the efficiencies of class-A/B amplifiers can be as low as 50%. And with small device areas, the heat is more concentrated, making it harder to remove from the system as a whole. A direct relationship exists between a device's temperature and reliability: The higher the temperature, the less reliable the device. In this article, we'll discuss the ways in which thermal challenges can negatively impact device reliability and some of the thermal management solutions Apex Microtechnology uses to ensure high reliability in analog power electronics.