Semiconductor Fault Isolation | Optical Fault Isolation

Troubleshooting semiconductor device failure is critical for improving manufacturing yield, reducing costs, and minimizing overall end-of-line test failures. However, isolating faults and defects (e.g. opens, metal shorts, and leakages) in the failure analysis workflow is becoming more challenging due to increasingly complex semiconductor designs.

Optical fault isolation (OFI) is a type of electrical failure analysis that makes use of a variety of optical techniques (photon-emission, static laser stimulation, etc.) to detect the causes of device failure.

This can include both static and dynamic OFI:

Static OFI techniques	Dynamic OFI techniques
Optical beam Induced resistance change (OBIRCH)	Laser voltage imaging (LVI)
Optical beam induced current (OBIC)	Laser Voltage Probing (LVP)
Light induced voltage alteration (LIVA)	Laser voltage tracing (LVT)
Thermally induced voltage alteration (TIVA)	Laser-assisted device alteration (LADA)
Static photon emission (PEM)	Soft defect localization (SDL)
	Dynamic photon emission (PEM)

Broadly, these techniques allow the user to analyze the performance of electrically active devices and locate critical defects that cause a device to fail. Understanding these defects, and then eliminating them from the manufacturing process, is crucial if modern fabs are to operate at high yield and profitability.

Thermo Fisher Scientific offers a variety of optical fault isolation systems as part of the Meridian product line. This includes all of the above OFI techniques, encompassing systems for both photon emission and laser stimulation applications. The Meridian product line consists of cost-effective, high-sensitivity solutions for localizing electrical failures in semiconductor devices, and is especially powerful when combined with other analysis workflows and solutions from Thermo Fisher Scientific's portfolio. Click through to the appropriate product pages below for more information.