Enhanced Failure Analysis (FA) of Organic Contamination Using Submicron Simultaneous IR and Raman Spectroscopy: Breakthrough Developments of Optical Photothermal IR (O-PTIR)

Rapid identification of organic contamination in the semi and semi related industry is a major concern for research and manufacturing. Organic contamination can affect a system or subsystem’s performance and cause premature failure of the product. As an example, in February 2019 the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TMSC), a major semiconductor manufacturer, reported that a photoresist it used included a specific element which was abnormally treated, creating a foreign polymer in the photoresist resulting in an estimated loss of $550M [1].