Scanning Fluorescent Microthermal Imaging

Abstract

Abstract We have developed scanning fluorescent microthermal imaging (SFMI), a new failure analysis technique. The fluorescent microthermal imaging (FMI) technique has been used for over a decade in its original form [1-2]. FMI normally relies on the use of a cooled, slow-scan CCD camera and a flood beam fluorescence pump source, usually an ultraviolet arc lamp. Interest in FMI has grown greatly over the past few years [3-9] due largely to its unique combination of high spatial and thermal resolution. In this paper, we demonstrate that the existing infrastructure found on a scanning laser microscope (SLM) is capable of acquiring the necessary images for SFMI using its scanned laser source and a point detector. The implications ofthis work are significant in that now high spatial and thermal resolution images can be made using an SLM without the need of additional, expensive hardware.