PHOTON EMISSION MICROSCOPE SYSTEMS FOR INTEGRATED CIRCUIT FAILURE ANALYSIS

Abstract

Photon Emission microscopy is widely used for the detection of current leakage phenomena in integrated circuits (ICs). Emission microscopy detects very low levels of light emitted by semiconductor devices and is an important technique in IC failure analysis for the localization of faults and failures. In this project, a new emission microscopy system called Spectroscopic Photo Emission Microscope System (SPEMS) with Panchromatic Imaging and Continuous Wavelength Spectroscopy capabilities is used to analyze different failure mechanism phenomena. High resolution spectral information acquired from localized photon emission of failed semiconductor devices was studied. A commercial emission microscopy system, EDO system was also compared with SPEMS. A new method based on the gray level changes of the images under different bias conditions is used to quantitatively evaluate the sensitivity of the two systems