Transient Heat Transfer Analysis of Thermo-Electric Cooler Thermal Tools

With increasing complexity of semiconductor devices, testing of integrated circuit packages is an integral part of the manufacturing process. A key component of testing is the temperature control of the junction temperature of the silicon for the purposes of binning and debug. For this reason, efficient and cost-effective tools used across the industry rely on the use of thermo-electric coolers. These devices are based on the Peltier effect to induce a temperature change when power is applied to them. Active thermal control of the silicon junction is thus achieved by changing the magnitude of the applied voltage to the Peltier device as well as modulating its polarity. The result is the dynamic response of the thermal tool when trying to control the temperature of the device under test. In this paper, the dynamic performance of these tools is characterized. A highly accurate numerical model is developed to evaluate the response of the thermal tool under different testing conditions. Various test cases and sensitivity studies are presented to address the optimization of the response of the Peltier device under simulated power profiles, considering the thermal control goals and the reliability of the thermal tool itself.