A Semiconductor Open Failure Analysis Assisted by Scanning Capacitance Micoroscopy in Single-Digit Nanometer Process

Failure analysis of single-digit nanometer process is faced to the challenging issue because physical dimensions are extremely shrunk with device scaling down. Specially, to define the root causes of open failures is more difficult than those of short failures due to the scaled dimension. Conventional techniques such as Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)-based Passive Voltage Contrast (PVC), Electron Beam Absorbed Current (EBAC) and Conductive-Atomic Force Microscope (C-AFM) provide effective solution but insufficient to find the root cause of micro or resistive open failure. This paper proposes a useful method for open failure analysis using AFM-based Scanning Capacitance Microscopy (SCM) which is normally used to obtain the doping information of semiconductor materials. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified from experimental results in single-digit nanometer process.