Leakage current study and relevant fault localization by IR-OBIRCH

In IC failure analysis, the leakage current presences within circuit is the main fault among the failure analysis cases, although the leakage current within different circuits can stimulate a variety of IC failure modes. Sometimes, it is difficult to localize the fault directly by IR-OBIRCH with the leakage current, if the current variation is too small to be detected by IR-OBIRCH. The resistance of the leakage current path is decreased by revealing the original leakage current, which is a good and safe way to increase the current variation and localize the relevant fault by IR-OBIRCH. Two real cases are studied successfully using this method.