Development of a Flexible Chip Infrared (IR) Thermal Imaging System for Product Qualification

A flexible and efficient chip Infrared (IR) thermal imaging system was implemented on the product manufacturing test platform by collaboration with the burn-in/wafer test, systems, process, and failure analysis teams. A liquid cooling cell was successfully designed and tested. The imaging system was applied to investigate some wafer probe power/thermal issues for server high end products. Furthermore, we applied the method of Spatially-resolved Imaging of Microprocessor Power (SIMP) [1] to translate the thermal map into a power map. Finally, we propose a new concept of product thermal qualification as a supplement and potential alternative to the traditional thermal test vehicle (TTV) qualification.