Power Semiconductor Thermal Management Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- Filings have plateaued, not grown. Annual filings peaked at 19 in 2018 and sit at 17 by the 2022 midpoint, with no sustained upward trend since — this is a mature, well-occupied claim space, not an emerging one.
- The foundational patents are decades old. The five most-cited records in this corpus, including US5998240A and US5021924A, date from the 1990s microchannel-cooling era and still anchor citation chains in current filings.
- Assignment is thin at the top. Only five co-assignee pairs appear across 284 families, and the leading named assignees each show zero filings in the latest recorded year — a sign that activity has dispersed rather than consolidated.
Filing growth compares 2021 (9 records) with 2024 (16) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 284 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Power semiconductor thermal management sits at the intersection of device packaging and power electronics: how heat generated at the junction of a power device is measured, spread, and removed before it degrades performance or shortens service life. This landscape covers 284 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026, filed against a search built around thermal resistance, heat spreaders, die attach, thermal cycling and liquid cooling, and restricted to the semiconductor and power-electronics IPC classes most relevant to junction-level cooling.
The technology composition skews heavily toward semiconductor device structure (H01L) and printed circuit assemblies (H05K), with smaller but persistent activity in power conversion, temperature sensing and lighting thermal design. Because publication typically lags filing by around eighteen months, the most recent one or two years in any trend line will understate true filing activity.
Let an AI agent run this analysis on your own technology
Pick a task. Every answer cites the patents behind it.
Filing trends and technology composition
Annual filing counts and IPC composition for the 284 families in this corpus, drawn from publications between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off.
A plateaued filing curve
Filings rose to a peak of 19 in 2018, and by the 2022 midpoint sit at 17 — essentially flat over four years rather than trending upward. Combined with the drop-off toward 2026 (partly a publication-lag artefact), the pattern reads as a mature field with steady incremental filing rather than a wave of new entrants.
Concentration in H01L and H05K
H01L (semiconductor devices) appears in 203 of 284 records and H05K (printed circuit assemblies) in 107, confirming that most claims are anchored in device or board-level structure rather than in system-level cooling loops. H02M power conversion, G01K temperature sensing and F21V lighting thermal design each account for a smaller, more specialised slice of filings.
Shares are the percentage of the 284 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Power Semiconductor Thermal Management with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about power semiconductor thermal management and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe foundational and representative filings
US11953386B2 — Method and system for estimating junction temperature of power semiconductor device of power module
The patent describes computing a junction-temperature prediction for two power semiconductor devices from their respective power losses and thermal resistances, then deriving a heat-sink temperature prediction by subtracting the first device's predicted junction temperature from a sensed reference temperature. The method targets estimation rather than direct measurement, letting a control system infer thermal state without adding sensors at every die.Filed by Hyundai Motor Company; published 2024-04-09.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5998240A | Method of extracting heat from a semiconductor body and forming microchannels therein | 303 |
| 2 | US5021924A | Semiconductor cooling device | 265 |
| 3 | US5270572A | Liquid impingement cooling module for semiconductor devices | 197 |
| 4 | US6711904B1 | Active thermal management of semiconductor devices | 172 |
| 5 | US5801442A | Microchannel cooling of high power semiconductor devices | 171 |
| 6 | US20090001372A1 | Efficient cooling of lasers, LEDs and photonics devices | 166 |
| 7 | US5712802A | Thermal protection of traction inverters | 128 |
| 8 | US20030133491A1 | LED junction temperature tester | 98 |
| 9 | US6016007A | Power electronics cooling apparatus | 85 |
| 10 | US20050164482A1 | Silicon Carbide on Diamond Substrates and Related Devices and Methods | 84 |
Citation counts are drawn from the searched corpus and favour older filings; treat them as a measure of influence on later claim drafting, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the numbers indicate
Three patterns stand out once filing counts, IPC composition and citation data are read together.
Growth has stalled, not accelerated
The peak year of 19 filings in 2018 has not been exceeded, and the 2022 count of 17 shows the field holding steady rather than expanding. For a technology this central to power electronics reliability, a flat curve over four-plus years suggests the core architectures are largely settled and incremental improvement, not new entry, is the dominant mode.
Device-level structure dominates the claims
H01L accounts for the majority of records, with H05K a distant second at 107. Power conversion (H02M, 18) and temperature measurement (G01K, 15) are present but minor, meaning most patent activity addresses how heat is managed inside or immediately adjacent to the die and package, not at the system or converter level.
The oldest patents still set the terms
The five most-cited records in this corpus were granted in the 1990s and describe microchannel and impingement cooling fundamentals. Their continued citation by newer filings signals that current claim drafting still has to work around, or build directly on, structures established before 2000.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to power semiconductor thermal management, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | MATSUMURA SUSUMU | 3 |
| Wolfspeed, Inc. | SAXLER ADAM WILLIAM | 2 |
| Powerwave Technologies, Inc. | NIKFAR NADER | 2 |
| Hitachi, Ltd. | Hitachi ULSI Engineering Corporation | 1 |
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | The Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. | 1 |
Only five co-assignee pairs appear across the 284 families, and the strongest pairing occurs just three times — evidence that most filings in this space come from a single assignee working with individual named inventors rather than through formal joint filing programmes.
Assignees and where the field is heading
Filing activity is spread across established semiconductor, automotive and electrical-equipment manufacturers rather than concentrated in a small cluster of specialists. Even the most visible named assignees in the recent-momentum data show no filings in the latest recorded year, which is consistent with the flat overall trend and with publication lag rather than a genuine stop in R&D.
Recent activity is thin across the board
None of the assignees tracked for recent momentum — including established power semiconductor and electrical equipment names — show filings in the most recent year. This is most plausibly a publication-lag effect given the 18-month gap between filing and publication, but it also means the visible ranking understates who is actually active right now.
Filing is largely solo, not joint
With only five co-assignee pairs identified and the strongest appearing just three times, formal co-filing between organisations is the exception. Most families trace to a single corporate assignee working with in-house inventors.
US and China lead filing venues
The United States and China account for the largest shares of receiving-office filings, with Europe, Japan, WIPO and Australia trailing at smaller volumes. That split points to two separate commercialisation bases rather than a single dominant jurisdiction for this technology.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Wolfspeed, Inc. | 0 | — |
| General Electric Company | 0 | — |
| Raytheon Company | 0 | — |
| Hitachi, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | 0 | — |
| YASA Limited | 0 | — |
| Powerwave Technologies, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Airbus SAS (France) | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
This landscape identifies the pattern; deciding whether to file, license or design around requires drilling into specific claims and citing chains.
Check freedom-to-operate against the 1990s citation anchors
Any new liquid-cooling or microchannel claim should be checked against the still-heavily-cited foundational patents identified here before drafting, since later filings routinely cite back to them.
Explore citation chains in Eureka →Map the under-claimed branches to your own roadmap
Sensor-free junction estimation and package-level liquid cooling show lower filing density than core H01L device structure — worth a closer look if your roadmap touches either.
Run a white space search in Eureka →Common questions on this landscape
The most-cited foundational patents in this corpus, including US5998240A and US5021924A, date from the 1990s and describe microchannel and impingement liquid-cooling structures for semiconductor devices. More recent filings, such as Hyundai Motor Company's US11953386B2 on junction-temperature estimation, show that current activity is shifting toward software-adjacent thermal management rather than purely mechanical cooling structures. No single assignee dominates the full 284-family set; filing is spread across automotive, electrical equipment and semiconductor manufacturers with only five identified co-assignee pairs.
Filing activity peaked at 19 families in 2018 and had settled to 17 by the 2022 midpoint, which is a flat trend rather than sustained growth. The apparent decline toward 2026 should be read cautiously, since publication typically lags filing by about eighteen months and the most recent years in any patent dataset are always undercounted. Taken together, the evidence points to a mature field with steady incremental filing rather than either rapid growth or genuine decline.
The dataset is concentrated in semiconductor device structure (H01L, 203 of 284 records) and printed circuit board assemblies (H05K, 107 records), meaning most claims address heat management at the die or package level rather than at the system level. Smaller clusters cover power conversion circuitry (H02M), temperature measurement (G01K) and lighting-adjacent thermal design (F21V). This composition suggests that device-level thermal claims are the most crowded area to file into, while system-level and sensor-adjacent claims are comparatively sparser.
Based on the IPC composition, junction-temperature estimation without additional sensors, package-level liquid-cooling integration, and thermal-cycling reliability modelling for wide-bandgap devices all sit at lower filing density than the core H01L device-structure claims. These are not guaranteed-clear areas, but they show less claim density than the heavily filed device-package space and warrant a closer look. Any filing decision in these branches should still be checked against the field's most-cited foundational patents for freedom-to-operate.
US11953386B2, assigned to Hyundai Motor Company, claims a method of predicting junction temperature for multiple power semiconductor devices from power loss and thermal resistance values, and deriving a heat-sink temperature estimate by subtracting a device's predicted junction temperature from a sensed reference temperature. Anyone building a similar sensorless or reduced-sensor estimation scheme for power modules should review its claim scope closely, since it covers the general computational approach rather than a specific hardware implementation. Design-around routes likely involve different estimation inputs or a different subtraction/derivation structure for the heat-sink temperature, but that requires a full claim-by-claim reading rather than the abstract alone.
Research Power Semiconductor Thermal Management in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole power semiconductor thermal management corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.