ELECTRON-BEAM CHARGING THERMOGRAPHY - A NOVEL TECHNIQUE TO STUDY THERMAL EFFECTS AT MIRRORS OF LASER-DIODES

The charging of insulating films in a scanning electron microscope is shown to be a highly useful thermographic technique to reveal hot regions in microelectronic devices with a spatial resolution in the submicron range. This technique has been applied to investigate mirrors of GaAs/AlGaAs graded index separate confinement single quantum well laser diodes. Thermographic images of these mirrors have been obtained with a spatial resolution of 0.25 mu m. The proposed technique makes it possible to image fast thermal phenomena.