Noncontact transient temperature mapping of active electronic devices using the thermoreflectance method

This work presents a demonstration of the applicability and efficacy of an experimental system capable of noninvasively and nondestructively scanning the transient surface temperature of pulsed microelectronic devices with submicron spatial and sub-microsecond temporal resolutions. The article describes the features of the experimental setup, provides details of the calibration process used to map the changes in the measured surface reflectivity to absolute temperature values, and explains the data acquisition procedure used to measure the transient temperature over a given active region. This thermoreflectance thermometry system is shown to be particularly suited for directly measuring the surface temperature field of devices undergoing the fast transients that are typical of next generation microelectronic devices. To illustrate the experimental approach, both quasisteady and transient temperature measurement results are presented for standard MOSFET devices.