Thermal analysis of advanced microelectronic devices using thermoreflectance thermography

Shrinking features and growing device complexity with today's advanced devices has led to increased challenges of gaining a full understanding of device thermal behavior. At the same time, with higher power densities having a full understanding of the device static and dynamic thermal behavior is essential for ensuring optimal tradeoffs between performance and device reliability. Thermal imaging based on the Thermoreflectance Principle can meet the challenges imposed by these advanced devices by providing sub-micron spatial resolution and temporal resolution in the picosecond range. This thermal imaging concept will be described in this paper and compared to traditional imaging techniques. Several case studies will be presented to further illustrate the advantages of the thermoreflectance technique for thermal imaging.