S. B. Ippolito, IBM, Hopewell Junction, NY; H. Terada, Hamamatsu Photonics, Systems Division, Higashi-Ku, Hamamatsu City, Japan

Summary: Annular illumination is a particular type of angular spectrum tailoring that can significantly improve integrated circuit analysis with an optical microscope when combined with solid immersion. We present the development, testing, and optimization of a simple and compact apparatus to implement annular illumination on a Hamamatsu iPHEMOS system. We demonstrated the improvements from annular illumination on an IBM 45nm silicon-on-insulator circuit in confocal scanning optical microscopy and widefield microscopy with an InGaAs camera.