High-Resolution Short-Circuit Fault Localization in a Multi-Layer Integrated Circuit using a Quantum Diamond Microscope

Abstract

As integrated circuit (IC) geometry and packaging become more sophisticated with ongoing fabrication and design innovations, the electrical engineering community needs increasingly-powerful failure analysis (FA) methods to meet the growing troubleshooting challenges of multi-layer (with multiple metal layers) and multi-chip components. In this work, we investigate a new electronics FA method using a quantum diamond microscope (QDM) to image the magnetic fields from short-circuit faults. After quantifying the performance by detecting short-circuit faults in a multi-layer silicon die, we assess how a QDM would detect faults in a heterogeneously integrated (HI) die stack. This work establishes QDM-based magnetic imaging as a competitive technique for electronics FA, offering high spatial resolution, high sensitivity, and robust instrumentation. We anticipate these advantages to be especially useful for finding faults deep within chip-stack ICs with many metal layers, optically-opaque layers, or optically-scattering layers.

9 pages main text (6 figures), 5 pages supplementary information (4 figures)

References in corpus (7)

• Micrometer-scale Magnetic Imaging of Geological Samples Using a Quantum Diamond Microscope
• Microwave device characterisation using a widefield diamond microscope
• Magnetic Field Fingerprinting of Integrated Circuit Activity with a Quantum Diamond Microscope
• Improved current density and magnetisation reconstruction through vector magnetic field measurements
• Measurement and Simulation of the Magnetic Fields from a 555 Timer Integrated Circuit using a Quantum Diamond Microscope and Finite Element Analysis
• Imaging current paths in silicon photovoltaic devices with a quantum diamond microscope
• A physically unclonable function using NV diamond magnetometry and micromagnet arrays

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Towards high spatial resolution magnetic imaging with a compact practical quantum diamond microscope
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• A compact, portable device for microscopic magnetic imaging based on diamond quantum sensors
• Fault Localization in a Microfabricated Surface Ion Trap using Diamond Nitrogen-Vacancy Center Magnetometry
• Sensing Electric Currents in an a-IGZO TFT-Based Circuit Using a Quantum Diamond Microscope