New Technique for the Thermal Resistance Measurement of Power Field Effect Transistors Using Cathodoluminescence

Abstract

A new approach for measuring the thermal resistance of power field-effect transistors (FETs) with extremely high spatial resolution below 40 nm has been demonstrated using cathodoluminescence generated by a low-energy electron beam. The energy shift of the fundamental bandgap caused by the current heating in the channel region is spatially probed, and is converted to the channel temperature using the temperature dependence of the material bandgap. The obtained thermal resistances of the GaAs metal semiconductor field effect transistor (MESFET) and the GaN MESFET are compared with those measured by the conventional electrical technique.

Time resolved temperature profiles of high power HEMTs by photocurrent spectral analysis

“…Commonly used techniques for the measurement of device temperature are: electrical DC method [3], IR techniques [4], liquid crystal techniques [5], Raman spectroscopy [6], cathodoluminescence [7], and photoluminescence spectroscopy [8]. Many of these methods do not allow the exact evaluation of the channel temperature, since some of these techniques (such as Refs.…”

“…[4,5]) are able to measure only the surface temperature the device, while some other techniques (such as Refs. [7,8]) may be affected by carrier diffusion phenomena that tend to smear out the knowledge of temperature distribution. Some other (such as Ref [6]), are able to achieve an in-plane x-y accuracy slightly higher than our technique; however, this technique is based on the measure of the optical phonon frequency of the semiconductor layer accessed by the Ramal laser.…”

Thermal Maps of GaAs P-HEMT: A Novel System Based on the Photocurrent Spectral Analysis

“…Several measurement techniques of device temperature are commonly used: electrical dc method [3], IR techniques [4], liquid crystal techniques [5], Raman spectroscopy [6], cathodoluminescence [7], and photoluminescence spectroscopy [8]. Many of these methods do not allow the exact evaluation of the channel temperature, since some of these techniques (such as [4] and [5]) are able to measure only the surface temperature of the device, while some other techniques (such as [7] and [8]) may be affected by carrier diffusion phenomena that tend to smear out the knowledge of temperature distribution.…”

“…Many of these methods do not allow the exact evaluation of the channel temperature, since some of these techniques (such as [4] and [5]) are able to measure only the surface temperature of the device, while some other techniques (such as [7] and [8]) may be affected by carrier diffusion phenomena that tend to smear out the knowledge of temperature distribution. Some others (such as [6]) are able to achieve an in-plane x−y accuracy slightly higher than our technique; however, this technique is based on the measurement of the optical phonon frequency of the GaN layer, and thus, it provides an averaged temperature information across the transversal growth direction due to the optical response of all the bulk GaN materials to the laser radiation.…”