A Coupled Thermoreflectance Thermography Experimental System and Ultra-Fast Adaptive Computational Engine for the Complete Thermal Characterization of Three-Dimensional Electronic Devices: Validation

Abstract

This work builds on the previous introduction [1] of a coupled experimental-computational system devised to fully characterize the thermal behavior of complex 3D submicron electronic devices. The new system replaces the laser-based surface temperature scanning approach with a CCD camera-based approach. As before, the thermo-reflectance thermography system is used to non-invasively measure with submicron resolution the 2D surface temperature field of an activated device. The measured temperature field is then used as input for an ultra-fast inverse computational solution to fully characterize the thermal behavior of the complex three-dimensional device. For the purposes of this investigation, basic micro-heater devices were built, activated, and measured. In order to quantitatively validate the coupled experimental-computational system, the system was used to extract geometric features of a known device, thus assessing the system's ability to combine measured experimental results and computations to fully characterize complex 3D electronic devices.