QUANTITATIVE THERMAL IMAGING OF CURRENT DENSITIES AND HEAT-FLOW IN ELECTRONIC MICROSTRUCTURES

The thermoreflectance technique is applied for imaging electric curren t distributions and thermal transfer in a temperature reference resist or heated by an alternating current and a high power transistor tested for its internal thermal management. High frequency scans allow imagi ng of the current density distribution in conducting strips of the res istor while scans of amplitude and phase of the surface temperature va riation at lower frequencies reveal plane, cylindrical and spherical t hermal waves. We investigate wave dimensionality as a function of heat ing geometry and thermal length, and present a method allowing a quant itative thermal analysis by exploiting the phase profile of cylindrica l thermal waves.