In transmission electron microscopy (TEM), one typically considers bright-field or dark-field imaging signals, which utilize the transmitted and scattered electrons, respectively. Analytical signals such as characteristic X-Rays or primary electron beam energy losses from inelastic scattering events give rise to the energy dispersive X-Ray spectroscopy and electron energy loss spectroscopy techniques, respectively. In this paper, the detection of the electron beam absorbed current (EBAC) and electron beam induced current (EBIC) signals is reported using a specially designed scanning TEM holder and associated amplification electronics. By utilizing thin TEM samples where the beam-sample interaction volume is controlled more through the incident electron probe size, the EBAC and EBIC signal resolution is improved to the point where implant regions and Schottky junction depletion zones can be visualized.

In the field of semiconductor development and failure analysis, metrology of layers such as gate oxide layer is one of the important analysis due to determine semiconductor itself characteristics. The number of requirements of metrology is increasing by using both scanning and transmission electron microscopy. High accurate metrology depends on accuracy of magnification of electron microscope. We developed accurate magnification calibration for scanning transmission microscope. This method is carried out by using micro scale specimen and silicon single crystal lattice fringe images. We achieved absolute magnification error of less than 2% for all magnification. This microscope provides high accuracy metrology for semiconductor device. We describe an automatic magnification calibration function for the high magnification range required to accurately measure features from a few to tens of nm in size.

Pin-point (specific area) planar transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis has been improved to study process-induced defects in recent very large scale integrated (VLSI) devices. The specimens are prepared by a combination of marking failure sites with focused ion beam (FTB) equipment and planar TEM specimen preparation technique. This method provides not only planar observation of localized failures with an accurate observation with high positioning accuracy but also wide range of observable area which is feasible to carry out some application techniques associated with TEM. In particular, it is found to be a powerful method to identify the nature of crystalline defects which cause the failures. This work presents the detailed procedure and demonstrates its successful applicability via studying a leaky bipolar transistor in 0.5μm BiCMOS devices (one failure of more than 4500 transistors). The results clarify the presence of stacking faults, formed during epitaxial growth, between collector and emitter regions in the specific transistor with resistive collector-emitter leakage current.