Failure Site Isolation Methods

Fault isolation is the cornerstone for effective failure analysis on leading edge, multilayered devices. Physical deprocessing and microscopic inspection are pointless on such complex ICs without first accurately pinpointing the location of faulty circuits and defects. The traditional suite of techniques like liquid crystal, EBIC, and voltage contrast has evolved into a broad set of electrical and physical methods that offer vastly expanded sensitivity and capability. This tutorial will cover these topics in detail and discuss principles of operation, prerequisites for use, and examples of application. The particular techniques included are electron beam testing (voltage contrast, EBIC, and CIVA), laser-based methods (OBIC, TIVA, SEI, resistive contrast imaging, and laser-voltage probing), photon emission microscopy (static and time-resolved imaging or PICA), thermal imaging (FMI, IR microscopy, and scanning thermal microscopy), magnetic field imaging (SQUID, magneto-resistive, and magnetic force sensors), and software-based logic diagnostics (scan-based testing).

Edward Cole, Jr. received the B.S. (1981), M.S. (1985), and Ph.D. (1987) in physics from the University of North Carolina. He joined the Failure Analysis department of Sandia National Laboratories in 1987. His research interests are in the development and improvement of non-destructive IC failure analysis tools, with emphasis on electron and optical beam techniques and he has published frequently in the field of failure analysis. In 1995 Dr. Cole was named a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. He has served on the executive and management committees of the ISTFA and IRPS conferences, chairing the ISTFA'96 event. He is currently immediate past president of the Electronic Device Failure Analysis Society (EDFAS).


David P. Vallett received the BSEE degree from SUNY Buffalo in 1982. Since then he has been with the IBM Systems and Technology Group in Essex Junction, Vermont, in both management and engineering positions in CMOS characterization and failure analysis. He is currently responsible for failure analysis technology development. He has authored several refereed articles in the field, received four best-paper awards, and has given a number of invited talks and graduate lectures on failure analysis technology challenges in micro- and nanoelectronics. He holds 11 US patents, and was given IBM's Outstanding Technical Achievement award for his work on picosecond imaging circuit analysis (PICA). He is a member of IEEE, Tau Beta Pi - the National Engineering Honor Society, EDFAS - the electronic device failure analysis society, and a past chair of the SEMATECH Product Analysis Forum. His current research activities are sub-micron current-density imaging using SQUID and magnetoresistive sensors and X-ray tomography for sub-surface defect imaging.