CADless laser assisted methodologies for failure analysis and device reliability

Failure analysis techniques had been proved to be efficient to localize defects allowing root cause analysis and corrective actions at design or manufacturing level. Unfortunately, end user’s component expertise laboratories have very rarely access to the device design (CAD) they are analysing and characterizing. Electronics components come like a black box so they have to find out the information by other means to be able to link an abnormal electronic behaviour to a specific internal structure. We have proven that Laser Stimulation (LS) is a valuable technique to overcome this issue. These techniques allow a very good correlation regarding the sensitive sites on the device and the electrical functions performed. We have embedded these techniques in a specific test flow to perform CADless accurate device failure analysis and characterization of margin evolutions in operating parameters for reliability study purposes.