Failure Analysis of Oxide Defects

There have been many good papers presented on various failure analysis techniques for studying oxide defects. This paper will review some of these and will describe, in detail, the application of nematic liquid crystals to the problem of locating pinholes in oxide layers. Methods of isolating the defective area will also be covered. Some problems caused by the use off deposited oxide scratch coating and a method of removing these coatings without removing the underlying metalization are also discussed.