*The article is sourced from the FLIR website.
The global supply of semiconductor materials and microchips has faced severe disruptions, from the COVID-19 pandemic to natural disasters in chip-producing regions, and more recently, a ramped-up trade war between the United States and China. Governments worldwide are racing to build up domestic supplies, with legislation such as the Chips Acts in the United States and the European Union directing billions of dollars toward research, manufacturing, and investment in microchip production.
Thermal imaging cameras are crucial at all development stages. Their ability to visualize heat allows engineers to discover design flaws and enables manufacturers to monitor circuitry for heat dissipation or thermal runaway. Thermal cameras help prevent costly downtime, shorten design cycles, and ensure product quality and performance, which is critical as chips become more powerful and compact.
Efficiency Challenges in Electronics Design
Delivering higher-functioning chips in smaller sizes brings the challenge of managing energy waste from radiant heat. For example, a typical electric vehicle contains more than 1,500 microchips, making even small energy savings per device significant for overall efficiency and performance. Thermal imaging allows engineers to calculate heat loss, improving system efficiency and enabling operation without bulky cooling fans that take up space and generate noise.
Thermal runaway is a major concern, especially in electric vehicles and systems using lithium-ion batteries. Electronics developers often push their designs electrically and thermally to deliver cutting-edge performance, which increases the risk of overheating. Engineers need accurate real-time measurements to identify exactly which components are heating up, rather than relying solely on predictive modeling.
Traditional tools like thermocouples require guesswork and can act as a heat sink, causing inaccurate readings. Spot pyrometers provide only single-point data, giving an incomplete view of thermal behavior. Infrared thermal cameras are optimal for non-contact, full-device temperature mapping, capturing thousands of temperature points simultaneously and converting them into detailed heat distribution maps.
Faster Test Times and Cost Savings
Infrared imaging provides a significant return on investment. A survey of R&D customers found that 71% reported cutting their testing and product development times in half, achieving over a 2x improvement and average cost savings of more than $55,000. Thermal imaging pinpoints design flaws, reduces test time, shortens time to market, and improves product quality across industries.
FLIR A50/A70 research and development kits offer cost-effective solutions for engineers and technicians needing thermal imaging for PCB troubleshooting or quality assurance. These kits provide multiple resolutions and lens options, include FLIR Research Studio software for image analysis, and integrate with custom software when needed.
Choosing the Right Thermal Camera
Key factors when selecting a camera include detector speed, sensitivity, spatial resolution, synchronization, and spectral filtering. Scalable systems can be used for development testing and integrated into production for inline inspections. High-resolution cameras offer finer detail, providing hundreds of thousands of data points per frame, while swappable lenses allow close-up imaging of small semiconductor structures, achieving resolutions down to less than 3 microns per pixel.
Software Considerations
Thermal imaging software enhances camera capabilities, offering data connection, recording, triggering, and analysis. FLIR Research Studio enables simultaneous multi-camera connections, conditional recording, and real-time visible and infrared image fusion. Emissivity calibration is critical because metal surfaces on PCBs reflect infrared, potentially underreporting temperatures. FLIR Research Studio allows separate emissivity settings per region, ensuring accurate measurements. The FLIR MIX™ Toolkit adds the ability to combine thermal and visual data in real-time or during post-processing.
The Impact on Electronics Design and Testing
Thermal imaging is now indispensable across the electronics product lifecycle. From early-stage design validation to final production quality control, infrared cameras provide precision, speed, and insight needed to meet modern performance demands. Real-time, non-contact thermal analysis identifies hidden flaws, optimizes energy efficiency, and prevents costly failures, accelerating time to market and improving reliability. As the technology continues to evolve, its integration into electronics design and testing deepens, empowering teams to build smarter, safer, and more efficient devices.
