Failure Analysis with Fred Femto Field (Part 3)

Surfing on an Infra-Red Wave

Hey smart people! Fred Femto Field here! Today I’m feeling quite lazy… Almost like I have been all day surfing on an Infra-Red (IR) wave…

If you didn't follow the last posts of the Failure Analysis Series, you can always check them here:

• Part 1: Dissecting EMMI and OBIRCH

• Part 2: Something about DALS

Anyway! Talking about Infra-Red… I Would like to share with you the LIT (Lock-In Infra-Red Termography) technique.

Nowadays, the electronic is getting smaller and smaller, therefore challenges regarding heat-sinking and heat-distribution are getting more and more common in our devices.

Thermography is the use of a thermal imaging camera to take a heat picture. Thermographic cameras view Infra-Red energy, as opposed to visible light energy, and display the resultant temperatures as shades of gray or colors.

In LIT, the power dissipated in the DUT (Device Under Test) is periodically pulsed, the resulting surface temperature modulation is imaged by the IR camera running with a certain frame rate. Amplitude and phase images are obtained.

Sources: Ref. 2 (schematic on the left) and Ref. 3 (Amplitude and Phase images)

LIT can be used in IC analysis to locate line shorts, ESD defects, oxide damage, defective transistors and diodes, and device latch-ups. It can also be performed in a natural ambient environment without requiring light-shielding boxes.

Quite a nice wave to surf right?

More on Failure Analysis Series coming soon!

Cheers from 10^-15 !!

(For the ones who want to know more about the aim of the blog, you can always click here)

References:

1 - https://www.evaluationengineering.com/home/article/13001382/thermography-in-the-microelectronics-industry.

2 - https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Nondestructive-Defect-Localization-in-ECUs-Through-Nishiga-Sato/101c93458822440844f7ca5201dd2c24c4434296

3 - https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9fe9/c161307c34fdf98f183a811b3550a6589c14.pdf

4 - https://sector-technologies.com/products/elite.html

5- https://www-old.mpi-halle.mpg.de/mpi/publi/pdf/540_02.pdf