Failure analysis of integrated devices by Scanning Thermal Microscopy (SThM)

High power densities dissipated in smaller and faster devices are leading to major thermal problems of semiconductor devices. The resulting local heat dissipation can induce deleterious effects like accelerated degradation or the destruction of the integrated circuits. Due to the shrinking feature sizes of modern devices and the small local extension of electrical failures the exact localization of these defects using established thermal failure analysis techniques like infrared thermometry becoming more and more difficult. Temperature measurements on passivated electronic devices with a sensitivity of 5 millikelvin by the use of a scanning thermal microscope (SThM) in contrast demonstrate the possibilities to use this system as a tool for failure analysis. Hot spot imaging with a spatial resolution of less than 150 nm, investigations on the backside of ULSI devices as well as a comparison with complementary established analysis techniques are presented. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.