Single contact beam induced current phenomenon for microelectronic failure analysis

The single contact beam induced current technique was developed to overcome the limitation of beam induced techniques which require contacts to both sides of the junction for imaging and characterization. The SCBIC technique uses only a single contact, usually the substrate, to image and characterize all the junctions that are connected directly or indirectly to the contact. In this paper, the theory of the single contact induced beam current phenomenon and a comparison of the application of the technique using electron, ion and photon beams are described. Implementation issues are discussed and application of the technique for both frontside and backside microelectronic failure analysis are presented. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.