P. K. Tan, Z. H. Mai, S. L. Toh, E. Hendarto, Q. Deng, Y. W. Goh, J. L. Cai, Y. Z. Ma, H. B. Lin, L. Zhu, J. Yu, H. L. Li, Q. F. Wang, H. Tan, R. He, J. Lam, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Pte. Ltd., Singapore, Singapore

Summary: With the scaling down of semiconductor devices to nanometer range, physical failure analysis (PFA) has become more challenging. In this paper, a different method of performing PFA to identify a physical vertical short of inter-metal layer in nanoscale devices is discussed.