Experimental investigation of self-heating effects in semiconductor resistors during TLP pulses

The purpose of this work is the experimental extraction of the local maximum temperature occurring in silicon resistors when a transmission line pulse is applied. The local temperature is extracted by combining transmission line pulses of different amplitude and at different ambient temperatures with two-dimensional electrothermal simulation. This investigation has relevant practical applications. The obtained calibration curves enable to convert the phase shift information as obtained by interferometric techniques (e.g. in Transient Interferometric Mapping) into absolute temperature readings. Moreover, relevant physical parameters (e.g. resistivity) can be extracted as a function of the temperature by transient heating, i.e. by avoiding the detrimental artifacts involved with the static heating of semiconductor samples at high temperatures. This enables to calibrate device simulators at those high temperatures, which are required for the simulation of ESD events.