Voltage contrast in microelectronic engineering

In this application note, ZEISS demonstrates that the GEMINI FE-SEM column provides excellent voltage contrast on microelectronic samples. The method of passive voltage contrast achieves strong results, while the active voltage contrast experiments requiring precise contacting of interconnect structures can be carried out even with a simple and cost-effective micro-probing setup. A large beam shift option provides a benefit for failure localization and can often avoid the time-consuming moving of the sample and repeated positioning of the tips. The focused ion beam offers an additional means for failure investigation in microelectronic circuits. Interrupting the grounding with the ion beam can make structures floating, which can then be grounded by ion beam cutting followed by ion beam induced metal deposition. This operation can be performed simultaneously with control of the resulting voltage contrast changes with the GEMINI column on an instrument that combines SEM and focused ion beam, such as ZEISS AURIGA.