A high resolution scanning electron microscope for in situ investigation of swift heavy ion induced modification of solid surfaces

Field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) features extremely high resolution images, and offers many valuable information. But, for a specimen which gives low contrast images, lateral stripes appear in images. These stripes are resulted from signal fluctuations caused by probe current noises. In order to obtain good images without stripes, the fluctuations should be less than 1%, especially for low contrast images. For this purpose, the authors realized a noise compensator, and applied this to the FESEM.Fig. 1 shows an outline of FESEM equipped with a noise compensator. Two apertures are provided gust under the field emission gun.

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High Resolution Scanning Electron Microscopy

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100086696 ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 49 ◽

pp. 478-479

Author(s):

David Joy ◽

James Pawley

Keyword(s):

Electron Microscopy ◽

Scanning Electron Microscopy ◽

Electron Beam ◽

Electron Microscope ◽

High Resolution ◽

Scanning Electron Microscope ◽

Electron Probe ◽

Impact Point ◽

Interaction Volume ◽

Scanning Electron

The scanning electron microscope (SEM) builds up an image by sampling contiguous sub-volumes near the surface of the specimen. A fine electron beam selectively excites each sub-volume and then the intensity of some resulting signal is measured. The spatial resolution of images made using such a process is limited by at least three factors. Two of these determine the size of the interaction volume: the size of the electron probe and the extent to which detectable signal is excited from locations remote from the beam impact point. A third limitation emerges from the fact that the probing beam is composed of a finite number of discrete particles and therefore that the accuracy with which any detectable signal can be measured is limited by Poisson statistics applied to this number (or to the number of events actually detected if this is smaller).

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FIB Enhancement of Mechanically Polished Cross-sections

ISTFA 2019: Conference Proceedings from the 45th International Symposium for Testing and Failure Analysis ◽

10.31399/asm.cp.istfa2019p0232 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Becky Holdford

Keyword(s):

Electron Microscope ◽

High Resolution ◽

Scanning Electron Microscope ◽

Cross Sections ◽

Focused Ion Beam ◽

Ion Beam ◽

High Resolution Imaging ◽

Chemical Attack ◽

Resolution Imaging ◽

Scanning Electron

Abstract On mechanically polished cross-sections, getting a surface adequate for high-resolution imaging is sometimes beyond the analyst’s ability, due to material smearing, chipping, polishing media chemical attack, etc.. A method has been developed to enable the focused ion beam (FIB) to re-face the section block and achieve a surface that can be imaged at high resolution in the scanning electron microscope (SEM).

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SEM-Based Nanoprobing on 40, 32 and 28 nm CMOS Devices Challenges for Semiconductor Failure Analysis

ISTFA 2013: Conference Proceedings from the 39th International Symposium for Testing and Failure Analysis ◽

10.31399/asm.cp.istfa2013p0217 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

Erik Paul ◽

Holger Herzog ◽

Sören Jansen ◽

Christian Hobert ◽

Eckhard Langer

Keyword(s):

Electron Microscope ◽

High Resolution ◽

Scanning Electron Microscope ◽

Failure Analysis ◽

Case Studies ◽

State Of The Art ◽

Root Cause ◽

Highly Efficient ◽

Technology Nodes ◽

Scanning Electron

Abstract This paper presents an effective device-level failure analysis (FA) method which uses a high-resolution low-kV Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) in combination with an integrated state-of-the-art nanomanipulator to locate and characterize single defects in failing CMOS devices. The presented case studies utilize several FA-techniques in combination with SEM-based nanoprobing for nanometer node technologies and demonstrate how these methods are used to investigate the root cause of IC device failures. The methodology represents a highly-efficient physical failure analysis flow for 28nm and larger technology nodes.

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