Reconfigurable Digital Circuits Based on Chip Expander with Integrated Temperature Regulation

This article is dealing with a development of custom chip expander platform with the possibility of accurate temperature control and integration of additional silicon-based features. Such platform may serve as a useful tool which facilitates the burdens connected with measurement and analysis tasks of experimental semiconductor structures.

The devised solution provides the functionality of carrier substrate (Al2O3 compound) with CTE compatibility to the experimental silicon chip and is fully customizable with respect to a particular chip. It also allows achieving an easy fan-out of small-diameter chip terminals into a larger, more convenient area and placement of chip specimens conveniently into space-constrained chamber of the AFM microscopes, probe stations, etc.

Real application of the developed chip expander platform is demonstrated in context of digital reconfigurable circuits based on polymorphic electronics. In this case the chip expander with attached polymorphic chip REPOMO is thermally stabilized at an ambient temperature level up to approximately 135C and its sensitivity to this phenomenon is demonstrated.