Abstract
As semiconductor technology keeps scaling down, failure analysis and device characterizations become more and more challenging. Global fault isolation without detailed circuit information comprises the majority of foundry EFA cases. Certain suspected areas can be isolated, but further narrow-down of transistor and device performance is very important with regards to process monitoring and failure analysis. A nanoprobing methodology is widely applied in advanced failure analysis, especially during device level electrical characterization. It is useful to verify device performance and to prove the problematic structure electrically. But sometimes the EFA spot coverage is too big to do nanoprobing analysis. Then further narrow-down is quite critical to identify the suspected structure before nanoprobing is employed. That means there is a gap between global fault isolation and localized device analysis. Under these kinds of situation, PVC and AFP current image are offen options to identify the suspected structure, but they still have their limitation for many soft defect or marginal fails. As in this case, PVC and AFP current image failed to identify the defect in the spot range. To overcome the shortage of PVC and AFP current image analysis, laser was innovatively applied in our current image analysis in this paper. As is known to all, proper wavelength laser can induce the photovoltaic effect in the device. The photovoltaic effect induced photo current can bring with it some information of the device. If this kind of information was properly interpreted, it can give us some clue of the device performance.