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Successful failure isolation from front side becomes very expensive and time consuming as the technology nodes becoming increasingly difficult. Electro Optical Techniques, composed of Electro Optical Frequency Mapping (EOFM) and Probing (EOP), are dynamic optical analysis techniques. Most EOP/EOFM applications have focused on design debug or design characterization of integrated circuits (ICs), but...
Due to the decreasing metal line size on complicated integrated circuit, non-destructive analysis strategy was very significant to failure analysis, especially met those special failures which were cold or high temperature failure and light sensitive failure. Two real special cases were presented in this paper to show when and how SDL (Soft Defect Location) technical can be considered to find the...
In mixed-signal ICs the die surface is divided between the analog circuit and the digital circuit often referred to as the logic area. Compare with the analog area, the logic area has more complex signals. The metal lines are narrower and closer together. These factors make it very hard to analyze defects such as metal bridges in the logic area. Firstly, the complicated waveform of signals and circuit...
For some High power analog ICs, with a failure mode that some high side MOSFETs could not be turned on, they recovered after de-capsulation by fuming nitric acid, which resulted in the undetermined failure root cause. A hypothesis was proposed that there may be a foreign matter inducing gate short source in a high side MOSFET in the power die as there is no passivation covered the MOSFET. For confirming...
There are many kinds of failure mode in failure analysis (FA). Some is simple and some is complicated to analyze. During analysis period, if an abnormal leakage current path is found, OBIRCH can be used to analyze the current path and find the defect location which induces the leakage current. But sometimes, the failure mode is very complicated. We cannot get the leakage current by measure IV-Curves...
Functional failures which were sensitive to temperature or voltage were usually seen in failure analysis and many strategies have been employed to solve this kind of failure. But some special failed ICs which were sensitive to light post decapsulation were difficult to handle. Three light sensitive functional failure cases were presented in this paper to show how we can find the root cause efficiently...
In Semiconductor IC failure analysis, failure localization is the most important step. However, as semiconductor circuits get more complex and devices trend to smaller dimension, failure localization becomes very difficult if failure is not caused during customer application, but by fab process. In this case, data analysis is recommended as a powerful addition to traditional failure analysis or yield...
FA (Failure Analysis) plays an important role in VLSI designing and manufacturing. In FA we usually handle the cases with open failure which we can't use FA tools (OBIRCH, EMMI and so on) to capture its location effectively. Therefore, it is an obstacle to improve success ratio of FA and reduce micro probing workload. In this paper, we proposed one FA idea to analyze gate floating when there were...
Voltage measurement of test pad directly by microprobe is typical technique in circuit isolation stage of failure analysis. But in some special circuits which are sensitive to microprobe, the voltage of some test pads will change when microprobe needle touches the test pads. Hence it is necessary to develop new measurement skills to confirm test pad status instead of measuring voltage directly. This...
In semiconductor failure analysis, Soft Defect Localization (SDL) technology is applied to localize defect that dependent on conditions such as temperature, frequency, voltage. SDL is usually used for digital failure analysis. However, to directly apply SDL in analog part is not so common. In this paper, a novel method is introduced to analyze analog signal failure at high temperature by SDL technology.
Generally, it is very difficult to locating a resistive via defect in function failure analysis in CMOS circuit. This type defect could not be located directly by Photon emission microscopy analysis or other failure analysis techniques. In this paper, a useful method is introduced to show how to locate a resistive via defect. Some cases are presented in detail. And some valuable experiences are shared...
OBIRCH/EMMI and microprobe analysis were widely used to isolate failed device. But routine failure isolation method may not find the leakage path on some special functional failure cases. Two cases were presented to show a useful failure isolation strategy—FIB assisted photon emission analysis and microprobe by performing simulation or removing the load effect.
Delay variation can be very difficult to localize in function failure analysis. In this paper we combine Delay Variation Mapping (DVM) and Soft Defect Localization (SDL) to develop a novel and low-cost method that can detect delay variation effectively. It just uses Static Thermal Laser Stimulation (S-TLS), Oscilloscope and Function Generator to compose a dynamic thermal laser stimulation (D-TLS)...
Photon emission microscopy analysis with the combination of OBIRCH analysis are very effective for defect localization, which can decrease analysis cycle time and improve success rates remarkably. In this paper, some cases are presented to show how to locate defects quickly by photon emission microscopy analysis with the combination of OBIRCH analysis.
In our laboratory, Soft Defect Localization (SDL) technique without a synchronization signal is realized by Optical Beam Induced Resistance Change (OBIRCH). But the accuracy of this SDL technique depends on power supply voltage, pixel dwell time and test program duration. In this paper, we will present experimental results to show how to affect the accuracy of SDL technique by these three factors.
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