A high-speed thermal imaging system for semiconductor device analysis

A new high-speed transient thermal imaging system is presented that provides the capability to measure the transient temperature distributions on the surface of a semiconductor chip with 1-mus time, and 15-mum spatial resolution. The system uses virtual instrument graphical user interface software that controls an infrared thermal microscope, translation stages, digitizing oscilloscope, and a device test fixture temperature controller. The computer interface consists of a front panel for viewing the temperature distribution and includes a movie play-back feature that enables viewing of the temperature distribution versus time. The computer user interface also has a sub-panel for emissivity mapping and calibration of the infrared detector. The utility of the system is demonstrated in this paper using a bipolar transistor hotspot current constriction process.