Selected contactless optoelectronic measurements for electronic applications (invited)

The area of contactless characterization techniques for electronic applications is too wide a topic to be considered in full detail inside a single review article. On this line of argument, we considered only some contactless optoelectronic techniques paying particular attention to those optoelectronic techniques which can be easily employed for material diagnostics or to perform simple voltage or temperature measurements in electronic devices. In spite of their simplicity and reliability, some of these techniques are not well known by the electronic community. The considered techniques include: scanning electron, photoexcitation and force microscope, electro-optical sampling techniques, charge sensing probes, second harmonic generation, and photoacoustic and thermal wave microscopy. Applications to signal processing, detection and measurement of microcracks, temperature, lifetime, surface recombination velocity, diffusivity, and injection level are discussed. The article is, then, completed by a very rich bibliography and by three appendices describing some physical phenomena (electro-optic, plasma optic, and photoacoustic effect) instrumental for understanding most of the considered techniques. Most of the considered techniques can be mounted in almost each laboratory as they do not require particularly expensive and bulky instrumentation. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.