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The TRAIT method for thermal characterization of electronic devices, whose theory was exposed in PART I [1] for one-dimensional (1-D) structures, was here applied to systems having heat fluxes with three-dimensional (3-D) dependence in order to demonstrate that the spatial resolution of the thermal resistance analysis is still qualitatively maintained in this type of structure too. The analytical procedure was first applied to simulated structures whose temperature transients and steady-state fields were obtained by means of a finite-element thermal simulation program. In these cases, the knowledge of the steady-state temperature distribution allowed identifying the thermal physical domains which correspond to the cells of the calculated equivalent thermal circuit composed by resistances and capacitances. Furthermore, some experiments on real electronic devices with purposely designed assembling structures were exposed and discussed. The samples were power-integrated circuits with plastic packages mounted on various substrates and Schottky diodes in TO-3 packages. The experiments on both simulated and real devices demonstrated that TRAIT analysis, being able to recognize the localization of some induced defects, maintains its spatial resolution character, despite the large distortion of the thermal domains occurring when the defects are close to the heat source.

In this paper, a careful theoretical analysis of the thermal dynamics of an electronic device and its package was carried out in order to study the problem of the equivalent thermal circuit implementation. It was found that the device temperature evolution in time is ruled by an infinite and convergent series of time constants. The knowledge of the first n terms of the time-constant spectrum obtained from the temperature transient measurements allows the complete characterization of a suitable and reliable equivalent thermal circuit structured as a Cauer low-pass network with n cells. The total thermal resistance is therefore evaluated as a sum of several contributions due to given parts of the whole system. The techniques allowing the physical identifications of these contributions are also discussed. Furthermore, the influence of plastic coverage on the device thermal behavior is taken into account. The proposed characterization method is also applied to one-dimensional (1-D) multilayered simulated structures in order to study the influence of the number of time constants used for the analysis and effects of local defects or modifications of the material thermal properties.

PART II. Presents a study which focused on thermal characterization of electronic devices. Methods and materials used in the study; Description of the thermal resistance analysis by induced transient (TRAIT) method; Results of the study; Conclusions of the study.