A high-speed thermal imaging system for semiconductor device analysis

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