Magnetic force microscopy measurement of current on integrated circuits

Author

Pu, A. ; Rahman, A. ; Thomson, D.J. ; Bridges, G.E.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Manitoba Univ., Winnipeg, Man., Canada

Volume

1

fYear

2002

fDate

2002

Firstpage

439

Abstract

In IC failure analysis, current is often used to indicate the presence of a defective device. By imaging the magnetic field produced by current flowing in an IC, the defective devices can be located. In this paper, we present experimental results on imaging current-carrying lines on integrated circuits using MFM. We have experimentally determined that MFM is capable of measuring currents as small as 1 μA-10 μA on ICs. We have also carried out simulations comparing MFM imaging with experimental results. Using these simulations we have devised a method to locate accurately the position of the internal current carrying faults from MFM images. This technique has significant potential for IC fault location and other IC failure analysis applications.

Keywords

circuit simulation; electric current measurement; failure analysis; fault location; integrated circuit interconnections; integrated circuit measurement; integrated circuit metallisation; magnetic force microscopy; 1 to 10 muA; IC failure analysis; IC fault location; MFM imaging; current flow; current measurement; defect location; defective device; integrated circuits; internal current carrying fault position; magnetic field imaging; magnetic force microscopy; simulations; Application specific integrated circuits; Circuit faults; Circuit simulation; Current measurement; Failure analysis; Force measurement; Integrated circuit measurements; Magnetic field measurement; Magnetic force microscopy; Magnetic forces;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2002. IEEE CCECE 2002. Canadian Conference on

ISSN

0840-7789

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7514-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CCECE.2002.1015265

Filename

1015265