PICOSECOND ELECTRICAL PULSES FOR VLSI ELECTRONICS CHARACTERIZATION.

Abstract

The technology used to generate and measure picosecond electrical pulses is described. The fabrication of photoconductive switches used as pulse generators and samplers is reviewed. The laser source is a pulse-compressed, frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser that very reliably gives pulses of autocorrelated width 2 ps and average power in excess of 350 mW at 532 nm. Excellent results obtained with polysilicon as the photoconducting material show the possibility of full integration of this technology with either bipolar or MOS silicon devices for in situ characterization.