Physical and chemical analytical instruments far failure analyses in Gbit devices

The current status and future trend of analytical instruments are discussed. Analytical instruments for failure analyses in sub-1/4 micron dimensions or less, require high spatial resolution and sensitivity at atomic levels. Using new analytical instruments, such as the nano-prober for electrical characteristics inspection in actual circuits, TEM-EELS for chemical bond analysis of nanometer area and GDS for precise composition analysis, it was found that a SiO/sub 2/ or TiO/sub x/ film formed by water from titanic acid (TiO/sub x/H/sub 2/O) produced with titan, water and chlorine, was a cause of high resistivity for a contact (CVD-W/CVD=TiN/Ti/Si) in sub-1/4 micron devices.