Abstract

The rapidly increasing speed and complexity of current and future electronic circuitry has in many cases exceeded the capabilities of conventional all-electronic testing techniques. The need for high-speed noninvasive testing of integrated circuits is on us. By turning to optically based techniques, we can exploit the availability of picosecond and subpicosecond laser pulses to make electrical measurements. This paper reviews the latest refinements and applications of the electrooptic sampling technique, which utilizes optical pulses directly as sampling gates in electrooptic materials. It is currently the fastest (<300-fs resolution, >1-THz bandwidth) measurement technique available for electronic circuits and does not require vacuum for operation. Electrooptic sampling can be applied to a wide variety of circuits and devices and, when configured as an optical probe, can noninvasively interrogate internal nodes of complex integrated circuits. We discuss many measurement applications ranging from the basic physics of subpicosecond electrical pulse generation and the high-speed properties of high T_c superconductors to integrated circuit probing on GaAs, silicon, and ceramic substrates.

© 1988 Optical Society of America