Novel SThM nanoprobe for thermal properties investigation of micro- and nanoelectronic devices

Scanning Thermal Microscopy (SThM)

“…The many papers on applications of SThM published since 1995 have been accompanied by works on new probe types (Luo, Shi, Varesi, & Majumdar, 1997;Mills, Zhou, Midha, Donaldson, & Weaver, 1998;Janus et al, 2010;Zhang, Dobson, & Weaver, 2011;Tovee, Pumarol, Zeze, Kjoller, & Kolosov, 2012;Janus et al, 2014;Hofer et al, 2015), calibration methods (Lefèvre, Saulnier, Fuentes, & Volz, 2004;Dobson, Mills, & Weaver, 2005;Wielgoszewski, Babij, Szeloch, & Gotszalk, 2014), and attempts to improve the SThM technique itself (Oesterschulze & Stopka, 1996;Pollock & Hammiche, 2001;Kim et al, 2008;Wielgoszewski et al, 2011b;Juszczyk, Wojtol, & Bodzenta, 2013). To date, the greatest impact on the development of AFM-based thermal analysis comes from the following elements: • Development of microthermal analysis (μTA) (Pollock & Hammiche, 2001) and the closely related development of doped-silicon probes (discussed in the section entitled "Thermoresistive SThM Probes," later in this chapter), which enabled localized calometric measurements.…”

“…The direct method utilizes current flowing through the tip, which in this case needs to be a resistive element (Fiege, Altes, Heiderhoff, & Balk, 1999;Vettiger et al, 2002;Lee & King, 2008;Dai, Corbin, & King, 2010;Janus et al, 2010;Wielgoszewski et al, 2010;Gomès et al, 2013;Kaźmierczak-Bałata et al, 2013). Indirect heating can be realized by using a separate heater affecting the temperature of a tip made of high-thermal-conductivity material (Brown, Hao, Cox, & Gallop, 2008).…”

“…Simple dc-current Wheatstone bridges, which are used in commercial solutions, are accurate enough to provide basic thermal images. Nonetheless, the measurement resolution and accuracy can be improved by enhancing the probe design [e.g., by using four connections, as did Aubry et al (2007); Janus et al (2010Janus et al ( , 2014] or the measurement setup Wielgoszewski et al, 2011b;Bodzenta et al, 2013). Another important advantage is that thermoresistive probes can be utilized in both P-SThM and A-SThM modes, as the thermoresistor can be used easily as a heat source.…”

“…To benefit from this, a four-point contact to the measured resistor is required. In terms of SThM use, such a topology was suggested along with a four-terminal probe design by Janus et al (2010). The general idea is that the most current flows through the main branch of the circuit (the R a resistor and the probe in Figure 11c).…”

A SThM probe optimization and its time-space multi-scale modeling

“…In order to enhance the spatial resolution, a new design of thermoresistive probes has been proposed by Gotszalk and his coworkers in [11][12][13] which include a piezoresistive sensor for the tip displacement control. Recently, Janus and his colleagues have proposed a novel design [14][15][16] expecting quantitative temperature measurement in the range of 1K with a resolution of few tenths of nanometers.…”