Novel techniques for dopant contrast analysis on real IC structures

In this paper advanced techniques for dopant contrast imaging based on Scanning Electron Microscopy will be presented. It will be shown that biasing the pn-junction of Silicon based dopant structures significantly improves the sensitivity for dopant contrast imaging thus allowing to investigate low doped regions as well as sub-μm scaled dopant profiles of transistor and diode structures in integrated circuits. This new imaging technique is demonstrated on a defective diode structure of an image sensor device.