Coupling surface temperature scanning and ultra-fast adaptive computing to thermally fully characterize complex three-dimensional electronic devices

A novel analysis engine and experimental system capable of fully characterizing the thermal behavior of complex three-dimensional active submicron electronic devices is introduced in this article. First, the thermoreflectance thermography (TRTG) system is used to measure the 2D surface temperature field of a pulsed device, noninvasively and with submicron spatial resolution. Next, the thermal conductivity of each thin-film layer composing the device is measured and a numerical model is built using measured and known values. The temperature distribution map is then used as input for an ultrafast inverse computational solution to fully characterize the thermal behavior of the complex three-dimensional device under study. By bringing together measurement and computation, it becomes possible for the first time to noninvasively extract the three-dimensional thermal behavior of nanoscale embedded features that cannot otherwise be accessed. The power of the method is demonstrated by verifying that it can extract details of interest of a representative CMOS device