Integrated Circuit Failure Analysis
Failure Analysis (FA) techniques are used to locate and identify the cause of failure in integrated circuits.
Application Note RequestThe two main types of FA applications that require film thickness measurement are front side delayering (for traditional device-side up circuit packaging) and backside thinning (for the newer flip-chip device-side down circuit packaging.)
Front Side Delayering
The front side delayering process requires knowledge of the thickness of the dielectric remaining after dielectric thinning. The Filmetrics F40 is ideal for this application.
Backside FA
Backside FA requires removing most of the Si die thickness before the circuitry can be imaged and knowing the thickness of the remaining Si after each thinning step is critical. The Filmetrics F3-sX system was designed specifically to take on the challenge of measuring the thickness of rough Si layers resulting from various backside thinning processes. Thicknesses from 5µm to 1000µm are easily measured and an option is available the extend the minimum thickness down to under 0.1µm. Both single spot and mapping versions are available.
To discuss your semiconductor failure analysis application, contact our thin-film experts.
Filmetrics offers free trial measurements - results are typically available in 1-2 days.
Thickness Measurement Example
Here we use our F3-s1550 system to measure the thickness of remaining Si on an integrated circuit after backside thinning. The F3-s1550 utilizes special optics which produces a spot size less than 10μm in diameter, allowing for the measurement of polished as well as rough and non-uniform layers.
Measurement Setup:
Recipe Used:
Measurement Result:
