The Fluorescent Microthermal Imaging (FMI) technique was developed as a new failure analysis tool for hot spot and leakage site localization in order to complement the Liquid Crystal and Light Emission Microscopy techniques. The goal of this work was to produce a user-friendly and automated FMI system which is simple to use by the laboratory personnel. The instrumentation was set up on a probe station. It involved a uv light source, a dark box, a motorized optical microscope, a slow scan cooled CCD camera, a temperature controller, electrical test equipment, and a PowerMacintosh computer with IPLab software for instrumentation control, image acquisition and image processing. Software extensions for IPLab were developed with Think C to add automated functions to the system using the GPIB-IEEE 488 bus. IPLab scripts were written to fully automate instrumentation control, image acquisition and processing. A study of EuTTA compound fluorescence intensity variation with temperature, exposure time, and uv excitation was performed in order to characterize the system. The FMI technique was then applied to hot spot identification on microelectronic devices and failure analysis. With a few simple modifications, the same system was also employed for Light Emission Microscopy.

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