Useful to give quick result in failure analysis lab with limited resources. Solve short or open related defects related to capacitor structures. Capacitor is one of the most basic passive components on any integrated circuit (IC) chip, such as memory, mixed-signal, or radiofrequency (RF) devices.
An innovative technique to solve capacitor related failure. Simple circuit edit to manipulate passive voltage contrast changes on capacitor. Useful to give quick result in failure analysis lab with limited resources. Solve short or open related defects related to capacitor structures.
The failure mode of the capacitor element is an insulation film failure across the element foil capacitors and shorting the foil. Most of these failures are due to some cavities inside the solid insulation film that result in partial discharges in the insulation .
Failure analysis (FA) on such capacitors is increasingly challenging with rising complexities in semiconductor manufacturing demands. In our previous paper, a simple circuit edit passive voltage contrast (CE-PVC) technique was introduced and applied in failure analysis.
In this paper, we demonstrate the failure analysis on one of each type of capacitor from FEOL and BEOL namely, MIM capacitors and dual polysilicon plate oxide-nitride-oxide (ONO) capacitors respectively. MIM capacitors are built in the back-end to allow a better reduction of the coupling effect with the substrate .
Some major failure modes of capacitor banks are introduced as following -. A. Capacitor Element Short Circuit Each capacitor element is an insulated foil capacitor which is insulated with a solid insulation film and insulating liquid.