The first application of a new thermal nano-probe based on the changes of electrical resistivity of a nanometer-sized filament with temperature has been presented for the thermal imaging of microwave power active devices. The integration of the filament the fabrication process of the novel thermal probe with a spatial resolution better than 80 nm and a thermal resolution of the order of 10-3 K have already been presented in reference [J. Microelectron. Eng. 57–58 (2001) 737]. To demonstrate the capability of the novel thermal nano-probe the measurements have been successfully performed on a 30 fingers GaAs metal–semiconductor field-effect transistor (GaAs-MESFET) with a maximum power dissipation of 2.5 W. The bias circuit has been designed to suppress the undesired microwave oscillations in the transistor. In this case the power dissipation is equal to the dc power input. The near-field measurements using the nano-probe are compared with infrared measurement and three-dimensional finite element static thermal simulations. The good agreement between simulations and measurements confirms the high capability of the nono-probe for these applications.

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