ABSTRACT
Failure analysis (FA) describes the process of diagnosis of defective integrated circuits. Historically, this has been most closely tied to the analysis of packaged devices, primarily customer returns and qualification failures. In general, the FA process consists of two phases. The first is determining the electrical cause of failure or failure site isolation. Electrical characterization begins with the analysis of the electrical failure signature. One of the factors, which contribute to the increased difficulty of FA, is the increase in device complexity. In terms of the electrical characterization, this is reflected in the increase in typical pin counts as well as transistor count. The tools used for the electrical characterization of devices and biasing for failure site isolation depends very heavily on the complexity of the devices. In addition to a suitable electrical stimulus, failure site isolation typically requires some level of sample preparation in order to expose the die.
