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Journal Articles
Journal: EDFA Technical Articles
EDFA Technical Articles (2000) 2 (1): 20–23.
Published: 01 February 2000
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This is the second article in a two-part series on the causes of stress voiding and the evidence required to tie it to an IC interconnect failure. The first part, published in the November 1999 issue of EDFA, focuses on the causes and distinguishing characteristics of stress void failures. Here, that information is applied in the analysis of an actual case of stress voiding. The author explains how he developed evidence of stress, nucleation, and diffusion, the three phenomena required to differentiate stress voiding from other failure mechanisms, and how this evidence pointed to specific processing errors and suggested how to fix them. Although the investigation relied heavily on traditional observational tools, they were applied in new ways using a relatively new technique, FIB backside thinning, to gain critical proof of nucleation and confirm suspected processing errors.
Journal Articles
Journal: EDFA Technical Articles
EDFA Technical Articles (1999) 1 (4): 21–23.
Published: 01 November 1999
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Stress voiding is an insidious IC failure mechanism that can be difficult to identify and arrest. It is of particular concern to those who produce and test ICs with aluminum-alloy interconnects or who assess the reliability of legacy devices with long service life. This article explains how stress voids form and grow and how to determine the root cause by amassing physical evidence and ruling out other failure mechanisms. The key to differentiating stress voiding from other types of failures is recognizing that is the result of three distinct physical phenomena, stress, nucleation, and diffusion, all of which must be confirmed before attempting to make process corrections.
Proceedings Papers
ISTFA1999, ISTFA 1999: Conference Proceedings from the 25th International Symposium for Testing and Failure Analysis, 317-325, November 14–18, 1999,
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Both the increased complexity of integrated circuits, resulting in six or more levels of integration, and the increasing use of flip-chip packaging have driven the development of integrated circuit (IC) failure analysis tools that can be applied to the backside of the chip. Among these new approaches are focused ion beam (FIB) tools and processes for performing chip edits/repairs from the die backside. This paper describes the use of backside FIB for a failure analysis application rather than for chip repair. Specifically, we used FIB technology to prepare an IC for inspection of voided metal interconnects (“lines”) and vias. Conventional FIB milling was combined with a superenhanced gas assisted milling process that uses XeF2 for rapid removal of large volumes of bulk silicon. This combined approach allowed removal of the TiW underlayer from a large number of M1 lines simultaneously, enabling rapid localization and plan view imaging of voids in lines and vias with backscattered electron (BSE) imaging in a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Sequential cross sections of individual voided vias enabled us to develop a 3D reconstruction of these voids. This information clarified how the voids were formed, helping us identify the IC process steps that needed to be changed.