Root-cause analysis of thin films: Selective dielectric removal for failure analysis of thin films on semiconductor devices

Abstract

A study was conducted to demonstrate the physical failure analysis of an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) module. The objective the analysis was to understand the main cause of failure for a series of shorted pins across several modules. Signature analysis of the data and electrical verification confirmed the fails and revealed that the short was to a specific power supply. A total of four failing ASIC modules were submitted for physical analysis and the modules were a sampling fails from a particular module lot and were identified as shorted pin failures. Two-point electrical probing was used to electrically verify a sampling of the failing pins at the package level across selected modules. The results indicated that the failing IOs were shorted to a specific power supply (Vdd3). Time-domain reflectometry analysis was also used to estimate the location of the defect.