NEW TECHNIQUE FOR FAILURE ANALYSIS: CROSS-SECTIONAL TRANSMISSION ELECTRON MICROSCOPY OF DEVICES.

As semiconductor devices become smaller, denser and more complex. microanalytical techniques are needed to observe microstructure and chemical composition at microscopic scale. A cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (CSTEM) method to study the actual device has been developed. The range of information that can be obtained is very wide and includes: microstructure, presence of defects, chemical composition, and lattice imaging of interfaces. There is presently no other technique that can give all of this information with such precision. CSTEM can be done on failed devices in order to investigate the failure mechanism. It can also be used as a way of checking products after process modification in order to verify that nothing critical has been altered.