Sebastian Brand

Ongoing advances in functionality and computational performance of microelectronic devices require continuation in the developments in the underlying technologies for e.g., interconnect and packaging to allow for efficient inter-chip communication and effective broad band integration in terms of frequency and data transfer. The resulting increase in the overall complexity is accompanied by decreasing physical feature sizes and an expansion of the assembly into the third spatial dimension. As a consequence, inspection for defects is required to be sufficiently sensitive to uncover defects of reduced size and weaker emissions and to allow localization in the three-dimensional space. The work presented here addresses research and developments conducted to increase sensitivity and to enable for a true spatial resolution of lock-in thermography as a technique for defect detection and localization. Based on the analysis of the spatial phase distribution estimated from acquired thermal signals recorded from microelectronic devices thermal sources inside the microelectronic structures have been sensed and precisely located in all three spatial dimensions inside the sample.

Sebastian is a senior scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microstructure of Materials and Systems in Halle, Germany. He leads a research-, development and application team for non-destructive defect localization techniques in the field of failure analysis and metrology in microelectronics. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering which he received in 2004 from the University of Magdeburg, Germany. His current research extends from acoustic methods (e.g., Acoustic Microscopy) over Lock-In-Thermography to magnetic imaging microscopy. He has more than 20 years of experience in the field of acoustics in life- and material sciences and authored /co-authored more than 100 publications.