Investigation of thermal effects in through-silicon vias using scanning thermal microscopy

Results of quantitative investigations of copper through-silicon vias (TSVs) are presented. The experiments were performed using scanning thermal microscopy (SThM), enabling highly localized imaging of thermal contrast between the copper TSVs and the surrounding material. Both dc and ac active-mode SThM was used and differences between these variants are shown. SThM investigations of TSVs may provide information on copper quality in TSV, as well as may lead to quantitative investigation of thermal boundaries in micro- and nanoelectronic structures. A proposal for heat flow analysis in a TSV, which includes the influence of the boundary region between the TSV and the silicon substrate, is presented; estimation of contact resistance and boundary thermal conductance is also given.