Precision Xe Plasma FIB Delayering for Physical Failure Analysis of sub-20 nm Microprocessor Devices

Thursday, November 9, 2017: 11:05 AM
Ballroom C (Pasadena Convention Center)
Dr. Vignesh Viswanathan , Advanced Micro Devices (S) Pte Ltd, Singapore, Singapore
S Sharang , TESCAN Brno s.r.o., Brno, Czech Republic
Karel Novotny , TESCAN Brno s.r.o., Brno, Czech Republic
Dr. Jozef Vincenc Obona , TESCAN Brno s.r.o., Brno, Czech Republic
V. Narang , Advanced Micro Devices (S) Pte Ltd, Singapore, Singapore
J.M. Chin , Advanced Micro Devices (S) Pte Ltd, Singapore, Singapore
Mr. Dionaldo Zudhistira , Advanced Micro Devices (S) Pte Ltd, Singapore, Singapore

Summary:

Deprocessing is an essential step in the physical failure analysis of ICs. Typically this is accomplished by techniques such as wet chemical methods, RIE and mechanical manual polishing. Manual polishing suffers from highly non-uniform delayering particularly for sub-20nm technologies due to aggressive back-end-of-line (BEOL) scaling and porous ultra low-k dielectric films. Recently gas assisted Xe plasma FIB has demonstrated uniform delayering of the metal and dielectric layers achieving a planar surface of heterogeneous materials. In this paper, we present the successful application of this technique to delayer sub-20 nm microprocessor chips with real defects to root cause the failure.