Abstract It is becoming more important to observe structures and failed sites in LSIs. An atomic force microscope (AFM) can obtain atomic scale topographic images on sample surfaces. To analyze failures in LSIs, several treatments for the AFM observation, such as wet etching and mechanical polishing for a crosssectional imaging, have been proposed so far. A good correlation of AFM images using FIB anisotropic etch with those acquired by conventional technique such as SIM and TEM has been demonstrated A crystallographic information about Al thin film is obtained by AFM using this technique.