Defect Analysis and Process Development of Microelectronics Devices Using Focused Ion Beam and Energy Filtering Transmission Electron Microscopy.

Abstract

1. Introduction.With continuing reductions in semiconductor device dimensions high spatial resolution physical and chemical analysis techniques will be more and more required for defect analysis and process development in the microelectronics field. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) analysis is now extensively used thanks to the fast Focused Ion Beam (FIB) specimen preparation technique which has furthered its development. Recently, we have shown the advantages of adding Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (EELS) to FIB-TEM analysis for semiconductor process characterization. In this paper we extend the EELS technique using FIB sample preparation to Energy Filtering TEM (EFTEM) observations. The EFTEM analysis allows high-resolution compositional mapping using spectroscopic imaging of core level ionization edges3. We show some applications of FIB-EFTEM to defect analysis and process development.2. Experimental details.The FIB system is a MICRION model 9500 EX using a gallium ion beam of 50 keV maximum energy with a 5 nm minimum spot diameter.