Abstract
AbstractLaser probing remains invaluable to the semiconductor industry for isolating and diagnosing defects in silicon transistors in integrated circuits during electrical stress tests. However, continuous device miniaturization below the 20 nm technology node has crammed multiple transistors within the focal spot of the laser beam, resulting in signal crosstalk, poor beam positioning accuracy and degraded fault isolation capabilities. The challenge is analogous to focusing attention to a single speaker in a crowd despite the multiple simultaneous conversations in the background. Through algorithms introduced in this patented work, consisting of cross-correlations, clustering, and our previously developed combinational logic analysis, we achieved beam positioning accuracy to better than 10 nm, extracted electrooptic waveforms from a node of a group of transistors (~18 times beyond the optical resolution limit), and applied this to isolate and identify an actual fault on a defective device. While problems associated with probing with shorter wavelength lasers continue to be addressed, our approach enhances and enables the continued probing of ICs using sub-bandgap photon energies without hardware modification to existing technology at semiconductor technology nodes below 10 nm.
Funder
National Research Foundation Singapore
Singapore Economic Development Board and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. through the IPP program
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
General Physics and Astronomy,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Chemistry,Multidisciplinary
Cited by
4 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献