J
John Larkin
Guest
On Fri, 23 Jan 2015 13:31:20 +0100, "Alain Coste" <coste@irit.fr>
wrote:
Given that heat sinks and huge mosfets are expensive, and opamps and
resistors are cheap, it often makes sense to use a lot of small fets,
to spread out the heat. And dump as much of the power as possible into
resistors.
A switchmode load box would be interesting. Fets switch and dump the
power into a big resistor.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
wrote:
Thank you John for the interesting information. The use of mosfets in linear
mode is not very common, and it's more difficult to find data than for
switch mode.
It often makes sense to use more fets, spread out over the heatsink
surface, especially if the baseplate part of the heat sink is thin,
namely has high thermal spreading resistance.
This uses copper heat spreaders to transfer the heat into the aluminum
sink.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Thermal/Amp.jpg
Now I see what to use _more_ fets means...
For my electronic load I could have used more transistors, but this
increases the number of current sense resistors and operational amplifiers
to control them. For the power I wanted (400 .. 420W), I thought that two
mosfets was a good compromise.
If the hot spot Tt is only 100C at 150W, you should be fine.
If I limit the power to 300W (two mosfets in //) I have enough confidence
that Tj max will not be exceeded.
But when I designed the electronic load I had counted on around 400W.
Well, 300W are not so bad for my needs, but I would like to know more
precisely "how far I can go too far".
It would be fun to somehow remove the epoxy and image the actual chip,
to see its temperature profile.
I removed the epoxy from a bunch of mosfets, but the process was sort
of violent.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Parts/ExFets.jpg
I think there are organic epoxy removers that might not trash the
silicon.
Now I see what _violent_ means...
Considering the price of my fets, I didn't really want to try it...
We have found the Ixys mosfets to be good for surviving linear-mode
high-dissipation pulses, out in the northeast corner of the SOAR
curve. We blew up a lot of fets to learn that.
Yes, my selection of Ixyx mosfets owes nothing to chance. If you want at the
same time very low theta-jc and guaranteed SOA for DC (and not only for
switch mode) the choice is rather limited. International Rectifier and
Infineon had some fets with guaranteed SOA for DC, but for theta-jc Ixys was
the best. The counterpart is the price, which doesn't encourage to
destructive tests...
Given that heat sinks and huge mosfets are expensive, and opamps and
resistors are cheap, it often makes sense to use a lot of small fets,
to spread out the heat. And dump as much of the power as possible into
resistors.
A switchmode load box would be interesting. Fets switch and dump the
power into a big resistor.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com