Contact Thermography – A Promising Method for Non-destructive Testing of Die Solder and Sinter Interconnects

In power electronic systems, e.g. electric energy converters, the use of bare semiconductor dies is necessary to realise the thermal management of such systems in case of high currents. Soldering and Ag-sintering are the common interconnection technologies. A currently unsolved question is the economic non-destructive inspection of these interconnects. A new approach is the so-called "Contact Thermography", a result of the public funded project "Dynatherm". A ceramic heater with very low thermal mass is in close contact to the device under test and generates a thermal pulse. The measurement of the time dependent change of the heater's temperature during and after the pulse should give an information about the quality of the soldered or sintered interconnect. The paper describes the setup and first results.