Improvement in Understanding of ESD Induced Failures Using Photon Emission Microscope: Few Case-Studies

High technology devices are throwing a great challenge for failure analysis due to their submicron feature dimension and high-density implantation. Hence, it needs suitable analytical equipment for detecting sub-surface defects in such devices. Several ICs, which failed during various ground level testing of spacecraft hardware were subjected to failure analysis to understand their failure cause/mechanism. Failure simulation study was also conducted on these devices to understand the root cause of failure. Failure analysis test result and failure simulation study indicated that failure of these devices are due to ESD. But due to lack of visual anomalies observed on the die surface of these devices, failure analysis results are not conclusive. Adaptation of Photon Emission Microscopy (PEM) technique, which is one of the latest techniques to find out subsurface defect in semiconductor dice, helps in visualizing the defects sites in the failed devices. In this paper failure analysis case studies on three linear ICs, LM139A, LM124 and SG1524 were presented.