Integrated Circuit Devices Characterization

Semiconductor devices have been used in many digital consumer products to provide a convenient and comfortable environment for our daily lives. Though semiconductor itself is not sold as electrical appliances in stores, in fact it has been used in many electric appliances such as temperature sensors in rice cookers, air conditioners, computer CPU, mobile phone, digital cameras, TV, washing machines, refrigerators as well as LED bulbs. There are mainly six types of semiconductor devices, including integrated circuit (IC) devices, discrete devices, optoelectronic semiconductors, logic integrated circuits, analog integrated circuits and memory devices. Among them, Memory ICs (SRAMs and DRAMs), programmable integrated circuits (PLDs, CPLDs, FPGAs, and CSSPs), and Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) are considered as the great promising devices for their miniaturization, low power consumption, intelligence and high reliability. From the further miniaturization of nanoscale circuits to the production of large-diameter IC boards, there is no limit to the development of integrated circuit manufacturing.

Fig.1 Integrated circuit devices applied in daily life.

Alfa Chemistry is a professional testing company for integrated circuit devices. We can provide professional instruments and inspections for many industries, including CD-SEM, design review SEM, wafer surface inspection system and dark field wafer defect inspection system, to meet the demand of our customers. For different test methods, we provide IEEE 488 standard and IEEE 1014 standard for automated testing, IEEE 1149.1 standard for digital testing, P1149.4 standard for mixed-signal testing and RF testing^[1].

An integrated circuit is defined as a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece of semiconductor material, normally silicon. A functional electronic circuit requires transistors, resistors, diodes, etc., and the connections between them. Through the manufacturing process of oxidation, photolithography, diffusion, epitaxy and aluminum vapor, the electronic components can be put together, fabricated on a small piece or a few small pieces of semiconductor wafer or dielectric substrate and then packaged in a package to become an integrated circuit.

There are also different classification methods for integrated circuits, which can be divided by chip scales, device structures, functions, realized ways and applications. Here we take chip scale as an example. According to the scale of the chips, they can be divided into small scale integration (SSI), middle scale integration (MSI), large scale integration (LSI), very large scale integration (VLSI), ultra large scale integration (ULSI) and gigantic scale integration (GSI). In fact, the boundary among different scales may not be so clear since it depends on specific process or technology^[2].

Fig.2 The classification of integrated circuits on account of chip scale (nm).

Tab.1 Definition of different scale sizes of integrated circuits.

Although integrated circuit devices already have great prospects and mature technologies, the production of defects is still inevitable and that is unfavorable to the application of integrated circuit devices. Therefore, how to check and find these defects quickly and accurately is a crucial factor in ensuring stable and efficient operation of integrated circuit devices.

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References

• Grochowski A, Bhattacharya D, Viswanathan T R, et al. Integrated circuit testing for quality assurance in manufacturing: history, current status, and future trends[J]. Circuits & Systems II Analog & Digital Signal Processing IEEE Transactions on, 1997, 44(8):610-633.

• Ye Yizheng, Lai Fengchang. Integrated Circuit Design [M]. Tsinghua University Press, 2011.