EMT480/3: RELIABILITY

AND FAILURE ANALYSIS

by
Noraini Othman
Edited by
Hasnizah Aris

Lecture 6: Fault Localization

The Importance of Fault Localization
 The most critical step in the failure analysis process is
fault localization

 The size and complexity of modern VLSI components

and defects of nanometric proportions make it
imperative to accurately localize faults prior to any
destructive analysis

 Multi-level of metallization – reduces observability

and node access
 The failure analysis challenge would be to locate and
identify this defect, knowing only its electrical effects
on the chip and perhaps secondary characteristics
such as temperature and voltage sensitivity

 The fault can be localized to the nearest logic block

or circuit net, or in some cases directly to the
responsible defect’s physical location
[1] Microprocessor shown at actual size; compared to [2] a defect shown
magnified 50,000 times
(Reproduced from IEEE Spectrum October 1997, “Finding Fault in Deep
Submicron IC’s” by David P. Vallett & Jerry M. Soden)
 Techniques that are generally used for failure site
isolation are:
(a) mechanical probing
(b) thermal methods (detect defects which exhibits
localized heating - hot spot or local temperature rise)
(c) photon-based methods (detect defects which
exhibits light)
(d) electron beam-based (takes advantage of light
beam ability to interact with an IC and localize the
effects of this interaction)
a) Mechanical Probing
Use thin metal needles
(microprobes) to measure
voltages
Measurement may be
done at low or elevated
temperature
Additional accessories
include pulse generator,
oscilloscope, parametric
analyzer and curve tracer
 Mechanical probing, making electrical contact with
the feature of interest through physical contact

 Multiple probes can source and measure voltages and

currents more precisely than any other technology.

 They work reliably through a wide voltage range, can

be used over a frequency range from DC to RF, can
pick up transient and one-shot signals, cost much less
than other probing options and make use of
established, well-understood technology.
 Drawback:

Difficult to align probes through an optical

microscope.

And the two things that restrict the usability of the

optical microscope for submicron-geometry devices
are its limited depth of field and resolving power.
 b) Thermal Method
 Thermal method are being used to detect defects
which exhibits localized heating (hot spot or local
temperature rise)

 Many defect types result in higher power supply

currents, which generate heat during operation

 Localized heating is commonly caused by low-

resistance leakage paths and shorts between
conductors associated with the excess current flow at
the defect site
 Heated object emits radiation. The wavelength
depends on temperature. Most of these radiation is in
the infra-red.

 Systems to detect this power dissipation can be

characterized by their sensitivity to thermal changes
Types of Thermal techniques

(a) Infrared (IR) thermal techniques - earliest available

techniques that calculate the temperature of an
object from its infra-red emission

(b) Liquid crystals (LC) technique - provide a binary

response indicating if the hot area is above the
crystal’s transition temperature or not

(c) Fluorescent microthermal imaging technique (FMI)

Liquid Crystal Analysis
 Liquid crystals (LCs) are a state of matter that have
properties between those of a conventional liquid and
those of a solid crystal. For instance, an LC may flow
like a liquid, but its molecules may be oriented in a
crystal-like way.

 In LC analysis, a nematic liquid crystals is being used to

coat the device under test (DUT). A nematic liquid
crystal is a transparent or translucent liquid that
causes the polarization waves to change as the waves
pass through the liquid. The extent of the change in
polarization depends on the intensity of an applied
electric fields
 Nematic liquid crystals have two distinct liquid phases. 
The temperature dividing the two phases is called the
clearing point

 To understand how LC works, it is important to

understand the concept of light polarization
 Light is made out of particles called photons. These
photons travel at the speed of light. While moving, a
photon vibrates in a plane which is perpendicular to its
direction, but within this plane the vibration direction
is random for normal (non-polarized) light.
These four arrows represent unpolarized light
rays. The arrows are tilted in random direction

Four parallel arrows representing polarized light

 To polarize light you can use polarization filter.

Simplified equipment setup for liquid crystal hot spot detection
(Reproduced from Text Book “Failure Analysis of Integrated Circuits: Tools and
Techniques” by Lawrence C. Wagner)
 The chip (or wafer) is first placed on a temperature-
controlled chuck

 An IC is then coated with a thin film of liquid crystal

and observed with polarized light while power is
applied to the chip

 The liquid crystal alignment is chosen so that its relaxed

phase is a twisted one. This twisted phase reorients
light that has passed through the first polarizer,
allowing its transmission through the second polarizer
and reflected back to the observer. The device thus
appears transparent
 When an electric field is applied to the LC layer, all the
mesogens align (and are no longer twisting). In this
aligned state, the mesogens do not reorient light, so
the light polarized at the first polarizer is absorbed at
the second polarizer, and the entire device appears
dark
 The crystals are temperature sensitive and change
polarization only in the area of the temperature
rise, with a resolution of about 0.1°C

 Depending on ambient temperature, 20 to 30 mW

of power may be required to create a discernible
spot (If the ambient temperature is increased to a
temperature just below the clearing point, 10 to
100 µW may be enough to produce a visible hot
spot)
 By using the LC technique, one can identify failure
locations caused by abnormal leakage or high power
supply current in the mA region

 Excessive heating indicates a high current flow, which

may be due to die defects or abnormalities like
dielectric ruptures, metallization shorts and leaky
junctions

Metal to metal shorts

identified by liquid crystal
analysis on a 64k EEPROM.
(Courtesy Sandia Labs).
 The curve tracer
provides
the best source of
power
for the DUT because it
can accurately monitor
current and voltages

Equipment setup for liquid crystal hot spot detection

(Reproduced from http://www.tmworld.com/article/CA187530.html)
Liquid crystal analysis image
(Reproduced from Microelectronics Reliability 44 (2004) , “An example of fault
site localization on a 0.18 m CMOS device with combination of front and
backside techniques”, by Yoshiteru Yamada & Hirotaka Komoda)
Example of a thin oxide defect on an IC detected with liquid crystal
(Reproduced from courtesy of Analytical Solution)
Question 1

What are the factors that affect the results

of the LC analysis?
c) Photon Emission Microscopy-PEM
 The ability to isolate a defect in a sea of
circuitry, pinpointing a problem hiding
amongst a plethora of transistors and
metal lines, is one of the cornerstones of
successful failure analysis.
 An analyst would be hard pressed to study
an anomaly in depth without first knowing
where the anomaly is.
 The resourceful analyst has many tools
and techniques to aid in the detection of
defects on an integrated circuit; some, like
liquid crystal or thermal imaging, are best
used to find short circuits that generate
large quantities of heat, while others, like
time domain reflectometry, are best suited
to finding open circuits.
 Unfortunately, these techniques are often
not sufficient, and an analyst must find a
way to characterize a device, creating a
baseline against which to contrast a failing
unit in order to detect the defect at the root
of a failure. In these cases, emission
microscopy provides the perfect platform
upon which to build an analysis.
 What is Photon Emission Microscopy-PEM?

 Some defect sites emit light during operation (which

signify high current and reverse biased breakdown)
which would otherwise be absent in a normal device
 Photoemission microscopy, or light emission
microscopy (LEM), is a relatively new failure analysis
technique for detecting photonic radiation from a
defect site, primarily due to carrier recombination
mechanisms
 Photon emission is typically a result of direct
recombination of electron-hole pairs, thus defects
with leakage profile will enhance further the
recombination process
 Such light / photo emissions are not visible to the
naked eye
 PEM therefore involves in collecting and imaging the
light given off from these ICs
 In general, photoemission microscopy uses a
powerful image intensification technology to amplify
the light emitted by such defect sites, therefore
useful in locating defects that exhibit light emissions
 Photo emission occurs when excess energy generated at
a leakage site in an electronic device is off as photons.
This typically occurs as electron-hole recombination
which can occur in several ways:
(i) Leakage in Dielectrics
Gate / capacitor oxide breakdowns
Thin oxides under uniform or peak stress (non-ruptured)
Inter-level insulation shorts
(ii) Current flow across p-n Junctions
(iii) Hot electron stress and damage
(iv) Saturated MOS devices under certain conditions
(v) Latch-up (vi) ESD damage
How to perform the PEM analysis?

  It utilizes a high-gain camera to detect the

miniscule amounts of light emitted by
some semiconductor devices and defects.
 A device is placed in view of the
microscope, which is surrounded by an
enclosure to block out all ambient light,
which would ruin the sensitivity of the
technique.
 The device is powered up, either in some
functional condition or in a simple pin-to-
pin biasing scheme; at this point, the
camera system takes over, mathematically
integrating data for as little as a few tenths
of a second to as long as several hours.
 The final output of the system is an image
with splashes of colour at sites where the
camera detected photoemission.
 While photoemission can be indicative of
defects like gate oxide pinholes or
transistors that have been damaged by
electrostatic discharge, there are some
semiconductor devices that photoemit
even when operating properly; the
electron-hole recombination that takes
place in a forward-biased bipolar junction
transistor, for example, gives off light.
 At first glance, it would seem that this
phenomenon would limit the utility of
emission microscopy for fault detection; on
the contrary, however, it is the ability to
analyze devices that are working properly
as well as those that are defective that
make emission microscopy so valuable.
Location of leakage current in MEMS microphone
diaphragm.
Failure of CMOS A to D converter