Abstract Tailoring the angular spectrum with annular illumination and collection can significantly improve integrated circuit analysis with an optical microscope, when combined with solid immersion. We present the development, testing, and optimization of a simple and compact apparatus to implement annular illumination and collection in a Hamamatsu iPHEMOS system. We demonstrated improved imaging of an IBM 45nm silicon-oninsulator circuit, with annular illumination and collection in confocal scanning optical microscopy and widefield microscopy with an InGaAs camera.

Abstract In the failure analysis of semiconductors, layout analysis to pick up suspect nets is getting to be a time consuming work due to finer wiring pitch and multi-layer structure. This article proposes a failure analysis navigation system (FA-Navigation System), which can make it easier to extract the nets passing through the signals detected by the hardware analysis tool, such as emission microscopes or OBIRCH analysis tools. It introduces the functions of the system and shows some case studies in actual failure analyses. The IDDQ fault diagnosis is especially useful for case studies. The result of the software diagnosis can be loaded in the analysis window of the FA-navigation system, and the system correlates the result to the nets extracted by the hardware analysis and displays coincident nets in a sorted manner to make the failure analysis easier.

Abstract SIL(Solid Immersion Lens) is well investigated for optical pickup application because of its capability of high resolution. We applied this technique to microscopy, especially for precise observation of semiconductors. And also we applied it to fault isolation techniques like emission microscopy , OBIRCH(Optical Beam Induced Resistance Change) and TIVA,SEI. We found significant enhancement of resolution and sensitvity by using SIL. Applying this technique to emission microscopy, we should be aware of optical absorption charactristics of SIL lens materials. We investigated proper SIL lens materials for emission microscopy and laser scanning applications, and checked performance of Si(Silicon)-SIL and GaP(Gallium phosphide)-SIL. We also compared combinations of some kinds of SILs and detectors like C-CCD(cooled CCD) camera, MCT(HgCdTe) camera and position sensitive detector with InGaAs photo cathode II(image intensifier).