High-resolution Terahertz near-field reflection measurements for complementary non-destructive inspection of integrated circuits

We present here Terahertz (THz) near-field imaging results providing important supplementary information for the detection of counterfeit electronic hardware. By using near-field transceiver microprobes we are able to perform depth-resolved measurements at packaged integrated circuits below the diffraction limits of conventional THz far-field tools and without the draw-backs of ionizing x-ray imaging. The applied reflection-mode can be used e.g. for the inspection of multi-layer structures, the localization of deviations from standard structures and the investigation of samples on THz opaque substrates. In this work we show as an example the detection of hidden discrepancies between externally identical ICs.