Scanning thermal imaging of microelectronic circuits with a fluorescent nanoprobe

We have developed a scanning thermal imaging method that uses a fluorescent particle as a temperature sensor. The particle, which contains rare-earth ions, is glued at the end of an atomic force microscope tip and allows the determination of the temperature of its surrounding medium. The measurement is performed by comparing the relative integrated intensity of two fluorescence lines that have a well-defined temperature dependence. As an example of application, we show the temperature map on an operating complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor integrated circuit. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.