Isolating failing sites in IC packages using time domain reflectometry: Case studies

This paper deals with Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) technique with the aim to confirm that this tool should not be kept away from a non-destructive failure analysis process flow. An improvement of known comparative TDR methodology, the sequential comparative method, is introduced and several case studies illustrate its better efficiency to isolate complex packaging defects. Also, main limitations of the technique are studied and several hardware improvements are proposed, especially in terms of spatial resolution.