RESEARCHERS DEVELOP NEW TRANSIENT THERMAL IMAGING SYSTEM.NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology, Washington, DC, www.nist.gov) The standards-defining agency of the U.S. government, formerly the National Bureau of Standards. It is one of three agencies that fall under the Technology Administration (www.technology. researchers have produced a new system that enables, for the first time, the precise measurement of high-speed transient thermal images. The new system is several orders of magnitude faster than conventional infrared thermal imaging systems and provides the capability to measure the transient temperature distributions on the surface of a semiconductor chip with 1 ms time, and 15 mm spatial resolution. The new transient thermal imaging system uses computer-control software with a graphical user interface graphical user interface (GUI) Computer display format that allows the user to select commands, call up files, start programs, and do other routine tasks by using a mouse to point to pictorial symbols (icons) or lists of menu choices on the screen as opposed to having to for controlling the translation stages, digitizing oscilloscope oscilloscope (əsĭl`əskōp'), electronic device used to produce visual displays corresponding to electrical signals. Displays of such nonelectrical phenomena as the variations of a sound's intensity can be made if the phenomena are , and device test fixture temperature controller. The system enables the observation of semiconductor device dynamic heating that can lead to failure events and enables the localization Customizing software and documentation for a particular country. It includes the translation of menus and messages into the native spoken language as well as changes in the user interface to accommodate different alphabets and culture. See internationalization and l10n. and shape determination of small heat sources before the heat has time to diffuse to surrounding areas. The system allows the display of the temperature transient waveform for a single point, or a temperature map of the entire imaged chip region. A unique feature of the system is a movie-playback mode that permits viewing the area map under dynamic heating and cooling conditions. The utility of the system was demonstrated using a bipolar transistor hotspot current constriction process. A paper detailing the results was published recently in the proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York, www.ieee.org) A membership organization that includes engineers, scientists and students in electronics and allied fields. Semiconductor Thermal Measurement and Management Symposium. |
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