Extraction of spatio-temporal distribution of power dissipation in semiconductor devices using nanosecond interferometric mapping technique

A method for the extraction of power dissipation sources inside semiconductor devices on a nanosecond-time scale is proposed using a backside transient interferometric mapping technique. The two-dimensional power dissipation density is extracted from the time and space derivative of the measured optical phase shift. The method is applied to the analysis of moving current filaments in an electrostatic discharge protection device operating in the avalanche regime. It is found that the filament dynamics is governed by the negative temperature dependence of the impact ionization coefficient. The total power calculated from the optical measurements is in excellent agreement with the electrical input power.