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

Summary: This paper presents the effectiveness of the nanoprobing technique in isolating nanoscale defects in hard-fail cases. In two of these cases, the SEM Passive Voltage Contrast (PVC) technique failed to identify the defect. Apart from identifying defective nickel silicide (NiSi) and poly-contact short issues, nanoprobing also successfully isolated the resistive contact location in a large Electrical Test (ET) structure. Such was the usefulness of the nanoprobing technique that greatly assisted the identification of failure mechanisms and thus improvement of device yield.