Reliable screening for zero-defect quality improvement by temperature gradient testing

This paper prevents a new reliable screening for Zero Defect quality improvement of deep sub-micron defects. Applications and results show this method is effective to reject the defective non-outlier dies of abnormal temperature gradient tendency. Challenges of production implementation have been overcome in a multi-step post-processing module including the new screening. Collected wafer-sort mapping data and failure analysis of the rejects have proved the capability of the proposed method in improving product quality and reducing customer returns with very acceptable yield loss.