Magnetic field imaging is a well-known technique which gives the possibility to study the internal activity of electronic components in a contactless and non-invasive way. Additional data processing can convert the magnetic field image into a current path and give the possibility to identify current flow anomalies in electronic devices. This technique can be applied at board level or device level and is particularly suitable for the failure analysis of complex packages (stacked device & 3D packaging). This approach can be combined with thermal imaging, X-ray observation and other failure analysis tool. This paper will present two different techniques which give the possibility to measure the magnetic field in two dimensions over an active device. Same device and same level of current is used for the two techniques to give the possibility to compare the performance.

Pulsed laser for radiation sensitivity evaluation has become a common tool used in research and industrial laboratory. This paper aims to highlight an approach to understand weaknesses of a component under radiation environment using a short pulsed width laser beam coupled to thermography technique, heavy ions test inputs and physical analysis. This paper is based on a study of a PWM device embedded on voltage converter.

For VLSI, internal electrical measurements are key steps to solve design debug issues and to perform failure analysis. Due to multiple metal layers, active areas of the chip are only accessible from the backside of the die. The ability of optical contactless techniques to operate through the silicon substrate and the few sample preparation required have widely contributed to promote them as unavoidable tools of the defect localization workflow. Timing issue or unusual consumption can be detected by static and dynamic photon emission analysis. The identification of the emission spots is an essential step of the process. Due to scaling, more and more emission nodes are located within the acquisition area so that large variations of emission intensity can exist. Because of various limitations, former thresholding techniques cannot ensure an exhaustive localization. In this paper, an automated process is reported to locate spots in these complex areas. We will underline the challenge and define application boundaries of this technique.

Recent developments and improvements of laser probing techniques are a good complement to traditional techniques like emission microscopy (static and dynamic) or laser stimulation (also static and dynamic, based on thermal or photoelectric stimulus) for the investigation of failure analysis and diagnostic of integrated circuits. Laser probing techniques have in fact evolved from mainly pulsed approach with high bandwidth [1] to other methodologies based on Continuous Wave (CW) [2,3,4,5]. The bandwidth of these CW approaches is generally lower than pulsed techniques and fine characterization of rising and falling edges or measurement of very small timing shifts can be more difficult or not possible for high speed devices. This bandwidth limitation is most of the time due to the amplification chain. But, CW probing bandwidth is good enough, and continuously improving, to identify directly or indirectly timing issues and to identify bad digital or analog behavior. The setup is also much easier than pulsed laser systems which require complicated synchronization between the system timebase and the device. On this other side new internal analysis modes have been introduced with for example some mapping mode based on frequency analysis or on timing degradation identification through second harmonic analysis [6,7]. At the same time these techniques have pushed the capabilities of a lot of existing tools to investigate low current, low voltage and/or low frequency devices such as analog parts, transmission gates and configurations when the defect cannot be activated at normal or high voltage. Comparison with EMission MIcroscopy (EMMI) in dynamic mode, which can have the higher bandwidth [8] is then possible.

The constant size reduction of the elementary structures in integrated circuits (ICs) and their increasing complexity pushes laser probing techniques to their limits. For old technologies these techniques were powerful tools in defects detection and internal analysis, but now the major limitations of the laser spot size implies the understanding of the complex information contained in the reflected beam when it covers an area of multiple elementary structures. Knowing the contribution of each elementary structure covered by the laser spot in the reflected laser beam is the key to have a good analysis and interpretation of the probed area. In this paper we will expose the different parameters that modify the intensity of a laser beam and the contribution of a basic structure covered by a big laser spot size as well as the systematic approach we have built to deal with this challenging reflected laser probe signal from multiple elementary substructures in very deep submicron technologies.

Time Resolved Imaging (TRI) acquisitions allow precise timing analysis of emission spots. Up to date technologies deeply challenge their isolation by hiding the weak ones, under sizing or over sizing visually detectable emission spots and finally by jeopardizing timing resolution. We report on an algorithm based on 1 and 2D signal processing tools which automates the identification of emission sites and optimizes separation between noise and useful signal, even for weak spots surrounding strong emission areas. The application of the algorithm on several sets of data from different types of devices and their results are also discussed.

Dynamic Laser Stimulation (DLS) techniques proved to be very efficient in soft defect localization bringing a lot of information about the device internal behavior. We need to use external parameter measurements such as frequency, delay, voltage etc to perform these techniques. So they can't be used to study internal signal propagation problems in latched device since signals are resynchronized. We will show that we can use the power analysis coupled with DLS techniques set up to characterize soft defect when we don't have a direct access to monitored signal propagation such as in some transistor transition issues. Laser stimulation in addition of power analysis is used to decrypt security codes in security chip, but in failure analysis it is a new way to reach internal information in order to localize soft defects.

Limitations of backside optical techniques for failure analysis of dynamically activated devices have underlined the need to extend the capabilities of Dynamic Laser Stimulation techniques (DLS). DLS techniques provide a precise localization of the dynamically failing area, but it lacks timing information as the fault is often related to a specific test vector. Optical probing techniques such as TRE and LVP [1, 2] are hardly applicable on cases with long test loop and for which no preliminary information is available on the time window of interest. Defect localization and electrical tests can be coupled in order to provide more accurate information about the failure, especially vector information in addition to x and y localization. We have developed a Full Dynamic Laser Stimulation (F-DLS) approach based on laser modulation by electro optic modulator to face this challenge. The purpose of this paper is to present DLS limitations, our motivations, comparisons with other DLS extensions, FDLS implementation on our system, application example and future F-DLS developments.

A key point to guarantee electronic device quality is device qualification. This part of the process is a significant contributor to the time and cost of the development and production of any electronic device. A device is required to perform a task and its operational lifetime is a key issue for the end user. The more sensitive the qualification technique is, the faster marginalities in the device parameters could be observed. Dynamic Laser Stimulation techniques fill this requirement and could be used in conjunction with traditional qualification procedures.