Fundamentals of Circuit Failure Analysis Based on Optical Fault Isolation Techniques

Circuit failure analysis based on optical fault isolation (OFI) techniques is widely used for Si debugging at the early phase of product development or failure analysis to improve yield and reliability issues at mass production stage. Three of OFI techniques are usually used for failure analysis. Dynamic laser stimulation affects
$V_{th}$
shift due to thermal heating or electron-hole pair generation in local area depending on the wavelength of the laser used. Laser voltage image and probing provide toggle image of signal and direct waveform differences between good and failure circuits, respectively. This paper introduces the fundamentals of Si level circuit analysis including digital and analog circuit using optical fault isolation method based on theoretical and experimental results.