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Due to the limitation of conventional FA technique, fault isolation of small magnitude IDDQ (Direct Drain Quiescent Current) is still a great challenge. Through a case study of a sleep mode IDDQ failure in a 28nm mobile application IC, by introduction of DRC tools, this paper presents an innovative isolation approach for detection of layout pattern related leakage weak points.
This paper describes the electrostatic discharge (ESD) failure caused by parasitic BJT in N-substrate process. The study of ESD failures in P-substrate process[1-3] has been a topic of increasing interest. Meanwhile N-substrate process, which may cause unexpected ESD failure, has hitherto received little attention. Through data analysis, unexpected ESD failure in N-substrate process may be attributed...
A previous study on long term reproducibility [1] demonstrated that CAMECA Wf can delivered the relative standard deviation (RSD) of the relative sensitivity factors (RSF) of boron (B) are typically 3.7%. Above results show that deviation can be estimated without testing the standards. This paper will demonstrate that the SIMS RSD depend significantly on the species concentration.
In this study, we demonstrate the use of the extended spectrum of the short-wave infrared DBX Emission System to detect thermal emission with a high enough resolution to perform physical failure analysis. The case study was performed on a 16nm technology System On Chip (SOC) memory access circuitry. Multiple optical filters were used in the analysis in order to isolate the few emission spots that...
A surface layer formation by Cs+ bombardment was observed during ultra-thin oxynitride gate dielectrics depth profiling. A significant thickness change relative to ultra-thin layer of oxynitride was noticed when testing a bombarded sample after a period of time. Cs, O and N depth profiles were examined by Dynamic Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (DSIMS). The bombarded sample and new sample were investigated...
The case study is focus on one of the assembly defect which is invisible during 1st level for analysis. Root-cause finding involved assessment until die level analysis.
This paper discussed the applications of electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) for element characterization in semiconductor manufacturing. The first experiment compared the ability of element chemical states analysis between EELS and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Some phase change random access memory (PcRAM) product suffered TiN connection electrode failure. EELS and XPS were used separately...
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is one of the most important characterization techniques in semiconductor failure analysis. However, preparation of a good TEM lamella for analysis has great challenges and requires a well-thought-out sequence of steps. The normal TEM sample preparation procedures, though time consuming, can fulfill majority of the sample requirements, but sometimes there are...
An advanced sample preparation protocol using Xe+ Plasma FIB for cross-sections wider than 400 μm is proposed. Challenging samples such as a BGA (CSP) or chip in a package often suffer from FIB milling artifacts. The results are unsatisfactory mainly due to different milling rates of the various materials (polyimide, tin, copper), ion beam induced ripples or due to significant topography. The process...
A novel design consisting of a heterogeneous stacking of silicon control rectifier is proposed in this paper. A latch-up free design in a high voltage BCDMOS process is demonstrated. Structures based on this method are compared with conventionally stacked SCR structure. Comprehensive characterization, including DC and transmission line pulsing (TLP), is undertaken to demonstrate the performance.
Wafer Level Chip Scale Packaging (WLCSP) varies in die size — length, width and height. It also have different number bumps per package which depends on the functionality of the device. Conventional way of doing failure analysis on WLCSP was very challenging from handling the unit and up to doing fault isolation, typically this results to a long cycle time in analyzing it. This paper aims to develop...
Traditional ESD protection program cannot meet requirements of higher ESD protection grade and parasitic parameter of protection devices when using V-by-One high-speed interface chip. This paper proposes an effective ESD protection program by way of reverse analysis and design of a VBO-based high-speed interface chip failure case. The program introduces a new SCR structure replacing the original diode...
Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is an excellent choice of high power amplifier (PA) because it has high electron mobility, linearity, breakdown voltage, base resistance and base loss of m semi-insulating substrates. This paper introduces the internal circuit of power amplifier chip, ESD failure analysis of GaAs MMIC-based power amplifier, performance assessment of GaAs chip and presents a protection design...
Tail bits in the RESET process influence the distribution of resistive parameters, and will dramatically decrease the uniformity in high electric stimuli region. In this study, such phenomena can be explained as non-uniform distribution of defects in the insulating layer and high defects density in the bottleneck region of conductive filament (CF). Then departing from defects' distribution function,...
Organic thin film transistors with indacenodithiophene — benzothiadiazole (C16IDT-BT) as the semiconducting layer was fabricated to investigate the effect of temperature on the charge carrier mobility. To offer guidelines for optimal working conditions, the temperature range was chosen from 300 K to 460 K. Results showed that the hole mobility improved as the temperature increased until a certain...
The application of techniques utilizing transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) to identify the interface and defect property in GaN based materials is presented. Several parameters including STEM camera length and probe size were demonstrated to have significantly influence on image contrast and layer thickness,...
This paper illustrates physical analysis approach to understand the nature of wafer backside metallization (BSM) discoloration and confirmed the problematic process layer with systematic methodology. A series of analyses are carried out in order to determine the cause of BSM discoloration. Our scanning transmission electron microscopy — energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (STEM-EDX) lines scan results...
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) plays an important role in the structural analysis and characterization of materials for failure analysis in integrated circuit industry as device shrinkage continues. It is well known that a high quality TEM sample is the important factor. When the TEM sample was in preparation for cross-section or plane analysis, curtain effect and positioning are the problems...
MM (Machine Model) is an ESD test method used to test for robustness of the device against the ESD event which is induced by the running equipment in fabrication or testing procedure [1]. Due to zero resistance in the equivalent circuit, MM is difficult to simulate. In most cases, MM capability can be calculated from HBM (Human Body Model) result (MM ∼10∼20∗HBM) [2]. But in this study HBM can reach...
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