Overview of Cu/low K technology failure analysis and reliability issues

Failure Analysis (FA) challenges and issues in several areas, such as physical FA, site identification, and backside FA will be addressed. New failure modes, reliability issues for advanced technology, especially for Cu/Low-k technology, and advanced FA techniques will also be discussed. For physical FA, we will discuss wet chemical etching, reactive ion etching (RIE), parallel polishing, chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) and combinations of these techniques. For site identification techniques, we will address photon based techniques, laser/electron beam based scanning systems, and electrical testing techniques. Backside FA techniques have become increasingly important for advanced technology. In this work, several backside sample preparation techniques and backside site identification techniques will also be discussed.