**1. Introduction**

During the lastfew decades, people have made great efforts on exploiting sustainable andclean energy to mitigate the global crisis of fossil energy and deterioration of environment. Accord‐ ingly, the application systems powered by new and clean energy are developed with high interests. One of the crucial systems is hybrid and electric vehicles (HEV/EVs), which rely fully orpartlyonelectricitywhichtransformedfromrenewable andcleanenergysuchas solar,wind, and nuclear powers. Therefore, HEV/EV is regarded as environmental-friendly product for the reduction of CO2 and noise remarkably. Furthermore, the development of HEV/EV is becom‐ ingamainpolicyofmostgovernmentsandautomotiveindustry,leadingtoworldwideextensive research and development [1].


**Table 1.** Dependence of IGBT module performance on power device and assembly.

HEV has dual power sources of internal combustion engine and electric motor, while EV uses electric motor to power only. In both cases, the electric motor is essential to the systems. The motor, on the other hand, acts as a generator for regenerative breaking. The importance of motor in HEV/EV results in high-level significance of power-train system of which the main element is DV/AC inverter. The inverter controls power conversion from battery to motor by power semiconductor devices. Therefore, the core component in the power system of HEV/EV is power semiconductor switches, which are normally insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) and free-wheeling diode (FWD) at the moment [2]. For increasing power, reliability, and prolonging lifetime, IGBT and FWD chips are packaged to module with multiple devices, isolation layer, and protection parts [2–9].

The great interest of developing HEV/EV across the world has motivated massive effort on improving and optimizing automotive modules. These modules always work in harsh environment of high temperature, humidity, mechanical vibration, and shock, and the possibility of chemical contamination. As limited by the space and weight in HEV/EV system, the module and inverter system should have light and compact packaging. Hence, for driving and controlling HEV/EV efficiently, IGBT modules with high power, efficiency, reliability, light weight, and small size are required, which result in huge challenges to power device and packaging technologies [9, 10–13]. The power module overall performances are determined to a large extent by the electrical, thermal, and mechanical characteristics of both power chips and the way of chips packaging. **Table 1** shows the dependence of IGBT module performance on power device itself and the assembly technologies.

To meet the series of challenges as mentioned above to automotive module packaging, power semiconductor and automotive industries are developing automotive-qualified power chip and module. The advanced power device could not guarantee superior output from a power module, and much of the harsh requirements from HEV/EV systems can be satisfied by the optimized packaging concepts, structures, materials, and technologies together with novel power devices [14, 15]. In this work, the status and trend of power semiconductor module packaging for HEV/EV are investigated. Section 2 addresses the functionality and require‐ ments of power electronics and module in HEV/EV system. A general overview of HEV/EV module design in terms of structure, material, and packaging technologies is discussed in Section 3. In Section 4, the typical state-of-the-art commercial and custom HEV/EV power modules are reviewed and evaluated. The packaging trends of automotive power module are investigated in Section 5.
