OBIRCH Driven Failure Analysis for Process Development of 120 nm to 65 nm Technology Nodes

Abstract

Given the ever increasing complexity of conducting failure analysis on today's latest generation manufacturing processes, the authors have investigated and implemented OBIRCH techniques into process development failure analysis practices. They describe their applications of OBIRCH to 120, 90, and 65 nm samples and their methods for interpreting the results. The OBIRCH technique has the ability to address faults within most structure types and quickly give information on a number of failing sites. It has proven itself as a necessary tool for failure analysis at advanced technology nodes, where fault characterization is getting difficult due to extremely small critical dimensions. The results obtained using the OBIRCH tool have been excellent on 120nm and initial 90nm results. The authors have not yet analyzed enough 65nm samples to form any type of conclusion regarding the tools ability at this technology node.