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Although photon emission microscope (PEM) systems are widely used in integrated circuit failure analysis, there is no known quantitative baseline to assess and compare the overall sensitivity performance of PEM systems. This paper describes a method to quantify the overall sensitivity of PEM systems based on spectral detectivity measurements. It has been applied to HgCdTe (MCT) and InGaAs PEM systems...
This article presents a novel method to identify marginal faults in DRAM product via atomic force probing. Failing cells which are difficult to be identified by traditional methods were easily localized by current imaging. In addition, current-voltage curves were useful for judging failure root causes
We presented a simulation concept which connects microstructural mechanical properties of copper films to the overall stress distribution. The underlying model is designed by combining several earlier models which describe different microstructural contributions to stress build up. The mechanical effects of surrounding layers are also included in our analysis. The analysis of the models and simulation...
Passive voltage contrast (PVC) using electron beam (E-beam) is the popular technique of the failure analysis procedure of real integrated circuit (IC) products. When the sample is exposed on the different energy electron beam, the surface of sample is charged positively or negatively. The charging characteristic is dependent on the secondary electron yield, but that is just qualitative analysis of...
Detection of killer defects is critical to improving yields in VLSI fabrication. Bright and dark-field inspection tools detect both killer and non-killer defects, and in some cases a high level of nuisance defects may adversely affect the ability to monitor and eliminate the real ones that have a detrimental impact on device yield. E-beam inspection tools take advantage of a phenomenon referred to...
The ITRS lists several areas where reliability technology needs development. This includes test methods for new materials and processes. However, perhaps the greatest change in reliability assurance is the requirement to place more of the responsibility for reliability assurance into the hands of circuit designers. This stems from the general compromising of reliability to obtain higher performance...
For the manufacturing of submicron or deep submicron ULSIs, it is important to completely suppress particles and contamination created on the silicon wafer surface. The tradition concept for cleaning need was used chemical content (APM, ammonia and hydrogen peroxide mixtures) to play a major role. Unfortunately, the SC-1 (APM) had negative effect on surface damage. In recent years, it has been modified...
As IC manufacturing processes move to smaller feature sizes, fault isolation technique and debug become more and more challenging. In this paper, die level backside fault isolation case studies using emission microscope and scanning laser microscope are presented. They efficiently identified the fault sites in 0.13mum and 90nm products
In this paper, a case study of BIST failure in SOI wafer fabrication was presented. With optimized charge neutralization using a well-controlled normal incident electron beam, a reliable depth distribution of K in the ILD was obtained which is helpful to understand the source of K contamination. From the SIMS and EDX results, the root cause was concluded to be K contamination introduced by the CMP...
In this paper, we analyzed the contamination of heavy metals on process wafers before gate oxide deposition. A lot of mushrooms-like defects were easy found in wafer edge. And at that time, a lot of pits also can be found in active region of device, as the silicon substrate had been with heavy metallic contamination. TEM and EDS analysis were used to examine the mushrooms type defects and pits defects...
This work illustrates succinctly the ability of the SCEM to provide valuable information for metrological studies of thick non-optically transparent semiconductor devices. The utility of SCEM to failure analysis comes from its ability to provide relatively high-resolution images from extremely thick specimens. In this way, the instrument can bridge the gap between optical SCOM useful for observing...
Scan/ATPG failures have been one of the main failures contributing to low yield issues and problems in microelectronics. In this paper, the beauty of the TetraMax diagnosis together with the Laker diagnosis software which serve as a complement was discussed, as they are one of the key diagnosis tools currently in the industry to analyze the scan/ATPG failures. The concept of the scan test, the files...
Scanning SQUID microscopy (SSM) is used to visualize current paths on package and die level. In case studies it is shown, how the integration of SSM into the failure analysis flow and its combination with lock-in-IR thermography (LIT) makes it faster and allows more reliable interpretation of results
Three novel CSP pad designs in a 0.18mum CMOS image sensor Cu interconnect technology were analyzed for use with a wafer level CSP (WLCSP) package. The CSP pad designs used various combinations of available aluminum and tungsten interconnect levels in order to improve the cross-sectional area without increasing the total stack height of the Cu interconnect technology. It was found that by increasing...
X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy/electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis (XPS/ESCA) is being widely used in failure analysis of semiconductor industries and wafer fabrication, as it is able to provide not only elemental information, but also chemical binding information. For example, using its fingerprint of C=O, we are able to identify possible root causes of carbon contamination in wafer fabrication...
During the development and qualification of a 300mm low-k/Cu back end of line (BEOL) technology, the long-term reliability of such interconnects including low-k time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB), Cu electromigration (EM), Cu stress migration (SM), and Cu/low-k thermal behavior are rapidly becoming one of the most critical challenges. In this paper, a comprehensive reliability evaluation for...
Single-crystalline SGOI substrate is achieved by multi-step oxidation of co-sputtered amorphous SiGe film on SOI substrate. Subsequently, SGOI PMOSFET using Pt-germanosilicide Schottky S/D and HfO 2/TaN gate stack integrated with conventional self-aligned top gate process was demonstrated. Excellent performance of the SGOI PMOSFET is presented
This paper describes a thorough investigation to identify the root cause of an LCD panel burn-in failure induced by an LCD source driver, which is observed in a large-scale LCD factory producing more than one million LCD panels per month. The investigation demonstrates the effectiveness of the circuit simulation to precisely locate the defective spot which is caused by a metal slice originated from...
Nowadays, there are numbers of pad finishing types in market for ball grid array package (BGA). OSP (organic solderability preservatives) pad finishing technology is one of the most widely used for the purpose of increasing the joint strength and achieving more excellence in heat-resistance. Especially, to develop the ICs products to have compatibility with non-clean soldering fluxes and solder paste...
This paper focuses on the future semiconductor manufacturing challenges. Some background information regarding the possible limits of scaling and the problems appeared in the sub-100 nm devices will be discussed, respectively, in section 2 and 3. The impacts of the future semiconductor manufacturing will be discussed in section 4. We shall also look forward to the possible geographical redistribution...
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