Terahertz radiation for inspection and fault detection has been of interest for the semiconductor industry since the first generation and detection of THz signals. Until recent hardware advances, THz systems lacked the signal quality and reliability for use as an effective nondestructive testing (NDT) method. Incremental advances in THz sources, detectors, and signal processing resulted in the successful applied-industrial use of THz NDT techniques on carbon fiber laminates, automotive coatings, and for detection of counterfeit pharmaceutical tablets. Semiconductor inspection and verification methods ensure the functionality and thereby safety of vital electronics for several critical industries. For this reason, the reliability and verification of a THz NDT method must exceed currently used inspection systems. With recent laboratory access to THz radiation, THz inspection methods are often compared with existing optical, electrical, and volumetric semiconductor verification techniques for their production monitoring and failure analysis viability. This review will cover THz techniques and their applications at the printed circuit board (PCB), integrated circuit (IC), and transistor/gate scales. The THz radiation gap spans between optical and electronic ranges with a millimeter-sized wavelength allowing for adequate penetration of plastic and ceramic and semiconductor materials. THz radiation can be used to determine structural features, electrical signatures in the THz range, and chemical information simultaneously. Cost and environmental limitations restricted the ability for THz NDT semiconductor inspection methods to escape the lab and succeed in the dynamic environment of a semiconductor fabrication environment. Hybridized metrology methods incorporating information from multiple inspection tools are a regime where THz spectral and structural data can be combined with existing methods such as optical, x-ray, or E-beam. THz can be used initially to offer support to the complex failure analysis and verification requirements of the semiconductor industry from nanoscale to macroscale features and components. For THz systems to become independent inspection tools used for semiconductor production monitoring, in the lab or fab, this will require a confident level of statistical process control for THz signal generation, detection, or processing. Applied industrial semiconductor device inspection will likely be a result of a combination of research into THz hardware, reconstruction techniques, and the widespread application of machine learning techniques. Many breakthroughs occurred over the years to enable successful nondestructive characterization and inspection of semiconductor devices from the nanoscale transistors to fully packaged integrated circuits and assembled PCBs.
A Bill of Materials (BoM) is the list of all components present on a Printed Circuit Board (PCB). BoMs are useful for multiple forms of failure analysis and hardware assurance. In this paper, we build upon previous work and present an updated framework to automatically extract a BoM from optical images of PCBs in order to keep up to date with technological advancements. This is accomplished by revising the framework to emphasize the role of machine learning and by incorporating domain knowledge of PCB design and hardware Trojans. For accurate machine learning methods, it is critical that the input PCB images are normalized. Hence, we explore the effect of imaging conditions (e.g. camera type, lighting intensity, and lighting color) on component classification, before and after color correction. This is accomplished by collecting PCB images under a variety of imaging conditions and conducting a linear discriminant analysis before and after color checker profile correction, a method commonly used in photography. This paper shows color correction can effectively reduce the intraclass variance of different PCB components, which results in a higher component classification accuracy. This is extremely desirable for machine learning methods, as increased prior knowledge can decrease the number of ground truth images necessary for training. Finally, we detail the future work for data normalization for more accurate automatic BoM extraction. Index Terms – automatic visual inspection; PCB reverse engineering; PCB competitor analysis; hardware assurance; bill of materials
We review the advances of terahertz (THz) science and technology in biophotonics, including related challenges and solutions. The main impediment to THz spectroscopy and imaging in this field is the high absorption of the THz beam in water. Hence, transmission imaging and spectroscopy of thick wet tissue using THz radiation has generally been quite difficult. However, the absorption of THz waves by water molecules is so strong that increasing the power of the THz source can lead to structural and functional changes in tissues, so solutions must go beyond a larger power output. In terms of resolution, THz imaging is superior to ultrasound but inferior to visible light microscopy. Owing to its unique material analysis capabilities, promising diagnosis applications have been demonstrated through THz imaging and spectroscopy. Unfortunately, many applications are limited by beam penetration depth and resolution. Hence, researchers from a wide variety of scientific and technical fields have been actively improving these features through the development of electronic devices and materials. In addition, groundbreaking optical architecture and materials to reduce beam absorption in the optics of a system and generate focused beams with smaller diameters have been proposed. On the software side, image processing techniques to computationally enhance the resolution and quality of THz imaging have been proposed. Data science and machine learning to automate the diagnosis of defects and diseases through processing THz images and spectroscopy data have been proposed. We have reviewed the applications of THz radiation in biophotonics and research achievements toward advancing these applications. A conclusion with a roadmap toward increasing the footprint of the THz technology in biophotonics is also proposed.
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