Applications of C-AFM technique to identify localized implant related low yield issue

Passive Voltage Contrast (PVC) technique is commonly used to localize the resistive and leaky contacts/vias that are induced by defects underneath. However, PVC has limitation to characterize only certain types of implant related issue and it has poorer contrast resolution as compares to Conductive Atomic Force Microscopy (C-AFM). Nanoprobing technique is superior in semiconductor device electrical characterization but it is not cost effective. To overcome these limitations, C-AFM technique was adopted to do electrical characterization at the fault site and it led to successful identification of localized implant related low yield issues which will be presented in this paper.