In this paper, the application of scanning near-field photon emission microscopy for imaging photon emission sites is demonstrated. Photon emissions generated by a Fin-FET test structure with one metallization layer are imaged with spatial resolution of 50 nm using scattering dialectic probe. The potential applications and limitations of the technique are discussed.

In this paper, scanning thermal conductivity microscopy is used to characterize interconnect defects due to electromigration. Similar features are observed both in the temperature and thermal conductivity micrographs. The key advantage of the thermal conductivity mode is that specimen bias is not required. This is an important advantage for the characterization of defects in large scale integrated circuits. The thermal conductivity micrographs of extrusion, exposed and subsurface voids are presented and compared with the corresponding topography and temperature micrographs.

In thermal microscopy, temperature error arises whenever a constant emissivity value is assumed for different materials. In this paper, we propose a new approach to eliminate these undesirable effects resulting from the ambiguous surface emissivity of materials. This method enables the compensated (true) temperature distribution of a device under test to be obtained from the measured temperature image. A transfer function that relates the measured and true temperature is formed to estimate the actual temperature distribution of a biased device to an accuracy of approximately 0.3-0.7K.

In this paper, the temperature distributions around interconnect defects due to electromigration are presented. A method to overlay the temperature distribution over the optical microscope image of the physical defect has also been developed. This allows a direct correlation of the temperature distribution and the physical structure of the defect.

A resistive probe based Scanning Thermal Microscope (SThM) was implemented in an analysis chamber of a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). By means of this hybrid-system thermal device, specific characteristics are detectable. Variable punctual heat sources can be simulated and the influence of ambient parameters can be investigated.

Temperature measurements on passivated electronic devices and the determination of the local thermal conductivity using the Scanning Thermal Microscope demonstrate promising possibilities to use this system as a tool for thermal diagnostics as well as for the failure analysis. Since doping concentration affects the thermal conductivity (k) due to the free carriers introduced, we propose the SThM as a potential dopant-profiling tool. To correlate doping concentration and thermal conductivity, we have mapped out the thermal conductivity of decreasing Boron-doped and Phosphorus-doped staircase silicon substrates and compared these data to the corresponding doping profile from ID Secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS). To demonstrate the ability of the SThM technique to analyze both thermal features - temperature distribution and quantitative thermal conductivity - of an electronic device, we investigated properties of an NMOS device.

Light emission and heat generation of Si devices have become important in understanding physical phenomena in device degradation and breakdown mechanisms. This paper correlates the photon emission with the temperature distribution of a short channel nMOSFET. Investigations have been carried out to localize and characterize the hot spots using a spectroscopic photon emission microscope and a scanning thermal microscope. Frontside investigations have been carried out and are compared and discussed with backside investigations. A method has been developed to register the backside thermal image with the backside illuminated image.

As minimum feature sizes decrease for ultra large scale integration, deleterious effects of smallest defects become increasingly important. In order to detect, measure and analyze these defects in buried structures, complementary techniques to those presently used must be developed and explored. Conventional optical microscopy techniques such as UV, confocal and laser scanning are approaching their fundamental limits of resolution. The near-field scanning optical microscope (NSOM) offers sufficiently high spatial resolution (50 nm), and an excellent signal-to-noise ratio to image buried structures inside optically transparent media. In order to investigate defects in layers below the surface of completed devices, we have developed a special sample preparation technique and have demonstrated optical resolution at the 50 nm level. In addition, we have explored the interaction in the image formation of a mixture of near and far field contributions. We show how useful buried layer information may be obtained via NSOM and demonstrate the present limitations of the technique. We compare our results to those obtained by conventional optical microscopy techniques.