Find companies providing IC FIB Services

Silicon Photonics Inflection Point - It’s Not ‘If,’ It’s ‘When’

Lately, there’s been a lot of buzz about silicon photonics in the data center industry. What’s it all about? The ever-expanding digital universe is being driven by cloud computing, mobile data, video streaming, and Internet-of-Things (IoT). Today, it’s estimated that by end of 2016, more than 6 zettabytes (i.e., the ...

Semiconductor Failure Analysis Process: From Failure to Root Cause

When a semiconductor device fails, the visible damage is not necessarily the root cause. A damaged metal line, cracked package, leaking transistor or burned bond wire may be the final result of a sequence of events rather than the original problem. The purpose of the semiconductor failure analysis process is therefore to ...

IC Decapsulation: Methods, Process and Applications

Many semiconductor failure-analysis techniques require direct access to structures that are hidden inside an IC package. The semiconductor die, bond pads, bond wires and other critical components may be completely covered by epoxy molding compound or other packaging materials. Before these structures can be examined using techniques such as optical microscopy, emission ...

Nanoprobing for Semiconductor Failure Analysis

Nanoprobing is an advanced electrical characterization and fault-localization technique used in semiconductor failure analysis to directly investigate individual transistors, contacts, vias and interconnect structures inside an integrated circuit. Instead of relying only on package-level electrical measurements, nanoprobing allows extremely small conductive structures on a deprocessed semiconductor die to be contacted using ...

Physical Failure Analysis (PFA) of Semiconductor Devices

Once an electrical failure has been localized inside an integrated circuit, the next challenge is determining what physically went wrong.  Was a metal interconnect broken?  Did a via fail?  Is there contamination between two structures? Has a dielectric layer broken down? Is a transistor structure abnormal? Or did the failure originate in the ...

RoodMicrotec

Germany

RoodMicrotec provides SCM, Test, Qualification, Failure Analysis and Engineering services to automotive, aerospace, industrial, consumer, medical markets and fabless companies.

Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) for Semiconductor Failure Analysis

Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) is one of the highest-resolution physical-analysis techniques used in semiconductor failure analysis. It allows failure analysts to examine extremely small structural and material anomalies that may be impossible to characterize using optical microscopy or conventional SEM alone. TEM works by transmitting a high-energy electron beam through an ...

ficonTEC and PHIX partner to enable high-volume manufacturing of multi-chip photonic modules

PHIX B.V. of Enschede, The Netherlands, is a Dutch packaging foundry that assembles their customers’ photonic integrated circuits into complete modules. As these modules evolve from initial prototypes into mature products, the manufacturing volumes become much larger and a higher level of automation is required. This aspect of photonic device ...

FIB Circuit Edit

What is a Circuit Edit?   A circuit edit is when you need to modify an existing ASIC or integrated circuit for whatever reason. This is usually done with the help of an ion beam that is focused onto the chip to modify it as per the request of the designer. Engineers ...

Why Dr. Morris Chang is not My Hero. A tribute to Failure Analysis Engineers

  Dr. Morris Chang is not my hero. He might be the most important person in the semiconductor industry in our lifetime, but he is not my hero. I have nothing against him. I’ve never met him and probably will never will. Instead, I meet my heroes usually after tape-out, when ...