Technical Activity Committee on THERMAL TESTING

TAC Co-Chair:

Bernard COURTOIS, Bernard.Courtois@imag.fr Marta Rencz,rencz@eet.bme.hu

Decreasing dimensions of ICs and increasing density of packages make thermal issues more and more important. The scope of this TAC is to enable the exploration of thermal tools, mechanisms, sensors in view to implement Design for Thermal Testability.

With silicon microtechnology, we intend to realize electrical networks: these are the integrated circuits. This goal however can never be obtained solely – a thermal network is also generated necessarily. The electrical parts dissipate heat, this is the source of the thermal network. As a result, the temperature of the chip increases, changing the electrical parameters. In some cases, this can even result in burning out the elements. With the decreasing chip feature sizes and package dimensions, with the increasing integration density, the heat production per unit volume increases – continuously enlarging the severity of these problems.

This is why during the design of an integrated circuit concentrating only to the electrical operation is not sufficient any more. Today, we have to keep in hand the thermal network as well, overheating and electrical-thermal cross couplings have to be impeded.

We need methods to calculate and measure the temperature distribution on the chip.

According to recent statistics, the largest part of field detected failures are originated from overheating, due to inappropriate thermal design.

Thermally originated malfunctions can be prevented by on-line thermal monitoring. This can be accomplished by thermal sensors integrated in the chip, connected to an evaluator and actuator circuitry.

The above mentioned important subjects are not appropriately represented in Conferences, Workshops, Technical Journals today. The only existing forum to discuss these subjects is the THERMINIC Workshop, created by the chairs in 1995. Recently, several Conferences and Workshops like the VLSI Test Symposium, the IOLT, the MCM Test and the ETW Workshops have added the thermal testing topic to the list of issues to be addressed.

This TAC has held 8 workshops and has organized a panel at the VLSI Test Symposium in 1997 to discuss thermal testing issues from various viewpoints. Also, a Special Issue of IEEE Design & Test of Computers on Design and Test of MEMS has been organized (Q4 1999).

References

1. Proceedings of the THERMINIC Workshops, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002.
2. Special Issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 1995)
3. Sensors and Actuators A-Physical, Vol. A55 N°1, July 1996.
4. Special Issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 1995), Microelectronics Journal, Vol. 28, N° 3, March 1997.
5. Special Issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 1996), IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems, Vol. 5, N°3, September 1997.
6. Special Issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 1996), Microelectronics Journal, Vol. 29, N° 3-4, April-May 1998
7. Special issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 1997), Sensors and Actuators A-physical, Vol. A71, N° 1-2, November 1998.
8. Special issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 1997), IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology – Part A, Vol. 21, N° 3, September 1998.
9. Special Issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 1998), Microelectronics Journal, Vol. 30, N°11, November 1999
10. Special issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 1998), IEEE Transactions on Components and Packaging Technologies, Vol. 22, N° 2, June 1999
11. Special Issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 1999), Microelectronics Journal, Vol. 31, N° 9-10, September-October 2000
12. Special issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 1999), IEEE Transactions on Components and Packaging Technologies, Vol. 23, N° 3, September 2000
13. Special Issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 2000), Microelectronics Journal, Vol. 32, N°10-11, October-November 2001
14. Special issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 2000), IEEE Transactions on Components and Packaging Technologies, Vol. 24, N°4, December 2001
15. Special issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 2000), Transactions of the ASME, Journal of Electronic Packaging, Vol. 123, N°4, December 2001
16. Special issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 2001), Microelectronics Journal, to appear in 2002
17. Special issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 2001), IEEE Transactions on Components and Packaging Technologies, to appear in 2002
18. Special issue on Thermal Investigations of ICs and Microstructures (THERMINIC Workshop 2001), Transactions of the ASME, Journal of Electronic Packaging, to appear in 2002