The power dissipated by the devices of an integrated circuit can be considered a signature of the circuit's performance. Without disturbing the circuit operation, this power consumption can be monitored by temperature measurements on the silicon surface. In this paper, the frequency response of a RF LNA is observed by measuring spectral components of the sensed temperature. Results prove that temperature can be used to debug and observe figures of merit of analog blocks in a RFIC. Experimental measurements have been done in a 0.25 mum CMOS process. Laser probing techniques have been used as temperature sensors; specifically, a thermoreflectometer and a Michaelson interferometer.

Measuring techniques of the die surface temperature in integrated circuits are reported as very appropriate for failure analysis, for thermal characterization, and for testing modern devices. The paper is arranged as a survey of techniques oriented towards measuring the temperature dynamics of the circuit surface and presenting and discussing both the merits and drawbacks of each technique with regard to the accuracy, reliability and efficiency of the measurements. Two methods are presented in detail: laser probing methods, based on interferometry and thermoreflectance, and embedded CMOS circuit sensors. For these techniques, the physical principles, the state of the art in figures of merit and some application examples are presented

Temperature is a physical magnitude that can be used as an observable quantity for IC testing purposes. The authors discuss in this paper the suitability of two temperature measuring strategies applicable to standard CMOS integrated circuits: a laser interferometer and a differential fully CMOS built-in temperature sensor.

Mechanical characterization of electronic devices is often quite uneasy; most of the techniques used require a contact with the sample under study. In this paper, we propose an optical noncontact interferometric imaging method to study the thermomechanical behavior of running devices, and in particular, to deduce the corresponding elastic strain energy. This analysis will permit us to localize the zones of fragility of the device. Results obtained on a power MOS transistor to detect the region of maximum elastic strain energy are presented. It is in particular adapted in microelectronics applications to detect stress accumulation due to dilation coefficient mismatches when assembling microchips.

By measuring the temperature at some points of an IC during a test procedure, defects can be detected (fault testing). With a simple processing of the measured temperature waveform, the distance between the temperature monitoring point and the activated defect can be derived. This paper presents four temperature measuring strategies to determine this distance for diagnosis purposes.