High spatial resolution subsurface thermal emission microscopy

Author

Ippolito, S.B. ; Thorne, S.A. ; Goldberg, B.B. ; Unlu, M.S. ; Leblebici, Yusuf

Author_Institution

Dept. of Phys. & Electr. & Comput. Eng., Boston Univ., MA, USA

Volume

2

fYear

2003

fDate

27-28 Oct. 2003

Firstpage

738

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate the improvement the numerical aperture increasing lens (NAIL) yields in thermal emission microscopy of Si ICs. Current Si IC technology has reached submicron process size scales, well beyond the spatial resolution capability of conventional thermal emission microscopy. Thermal emission microscopy measures the spatial distribution of temperature in a sample. The spatial distribution of temperature within a sample can be calculated, because the optical power emitted by the sample is a function of its local temperature. To evaluate the longitudinal spatial resolution we take successive images at different defocus distances in the longitudinal direction. The FWHM of the signal from the positive defocus represents a significant improvement of the longitudinal spatial resolution over conventional thermal emission microscopy, where the ultimate limit is 18 μm.

Keywords

elemental semiconductors; image resolution; integrated circuits; light reflection; light refraction; optical focusing; optical microscopy; silicon; 18 micron; Si; Si IC technology; numerical aperture increasing lens; optical power; positive defocus signal; spatial resolution subsurface; successive images; thermal emission microscopy; Artificial intelligence; Heating; Inspection; Microscopy; Nails; Optical refraction; Optical variables control; Spatial resolution; Stimulated emission; Temperature distribution;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, 2003. LEOS 2003. The 16th Annual Meeting of the IEEE

ISSN

1092-8081

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7888-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/LEOS.2003.1253012

Filename

1253012