Addressing the Thermal Challenges of Today’s High-Performance Devices

Today’s semiconductor and microelectronic devices are being deployed in mission-critical applications ranging from 5G and Smart Grid networks, to automotive electronics and advanced radar systems. In addition to meeting power and frequency requirements, today’s devices may also be required to operate reliably in challenging high temperature environments. Meeting performance requirements are leading to shrinking device geometries, introduction of new materials and more complex 3-dimensional structures. Since both high temperature and high temperature gradients contribute to mean-time to failure (MTTF), it is essential that one have a thorough understanding of both static and dynamic thermal behavior. Fortunately, recent advancements in thermal characterization techniques, with thermoreflectance-based and infrared thermal imaging have enabled the ability to detect thermal anomalies on a nanosecond scale with sub-micron spatial resolution and 10 mK thermal resolution.

Several experimental results for nanoscale heat sources on Silicon, GaAs, GaN, as well as complex device structures such as high electron mobility transistors (HEMT), heterostructure bipolar transistor (HBT), insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) will be presented. Thermoreflectance imaging is used to study transient temperature distribution in active devices. Combining lock-in imaging with advanced image processing techniques, one can achieve far-field sub-diffraction limit resolution to 100 to 300 nm.

Dustin Kendig
dustin@microsanj.com

Microsanj will be presenting at SemiTHERM, Thursday Dec 9th and 4PM EST!

Register to attend here