Spectrally- and temporally-resolved dynamic emission from CMOS ICs

Dynamic light emission from hot carriers in CMOS gates is a very useful technique for integrated circuit debug and failure analysis. The spectrum of the hot-carrier luminescence is nearly black-body and exhibits a blue shift with increasing drain-source voltage, V_ds. Other mechanisms for emission, such as gate-source leakage, exhibit different spectra. Thus, it is interesting to examine the spectral as well as temporal behavior of the light emitted from CMOS circuits during operation. In this paper, we demonstrate simultaneous temporal (<10 ps) and spectral (50 nm) resolution via photon detection through the silicon backside over the wavelength range of 1.1-1.6 μm.