Fine structure of heat flow path in semiconductor devices: A measurement and identification method

A new method has been developed in order to identify the thermal environment of a semiconductor device chip. The identification algorithm operates on the thermal transient response of the device recorded during a one-shot pulse measurement. A deconvolution operation performed in the logarithmic time domain gives the “time-constant spectrum” of the chip-case-ambient thermal structure. A further transformation leads to the “structure-function” that is the cross-sectional area of the heat conducting materials vs thermal resistance (related to the heat source). The structure function has a good and quantitatively evaluable correspondence to the physical chip environment and heat conducting structure. Separating the different regions of the heat-flow path (corresponding to the chip, bond, header, case) as well as the detection of eventual heat-transport irregularities (mounting errors) is possible.