Noncontact inspection technique for electrical failures in semiconductor devices using a laser terahertz emission microscope

Abstract

We have proposed and demonstrated a novel technique for the noncontact inspection of electrical failures in semiconductor devices using a laser terahertz emission microscope. It was found that the waveforms of the terahertz pulses, emitted by exciting p-n junctions in semiconductor circuits with focused ultrafast laser pulses, depend on the interconnection structures of the circuits. We successfully distinguished damaged silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor circuits with disconnected wires from normal ones by comparing the images of terahertz emission amplitudes between a normal chip and a defective one.