Solving Time Dependent IC Failures Through Unorthodox Emission Microscopy Technique

The authors have utilized an unorthodox Photon Emission Microscopy (PEM) technique equipped with an Indium Gallium Arsenide (InGaAs) detector to identify the root-cause of two time dependent IC failure cases. These two cases consist of a delay fault for less than 15ms and a failing device after more than 19 minutes of operation. Results on both cases show proof that our unorthodox PEM fault isolation approach can be a valuable approach to successfully solve challenging time dependent IC failure in the absence of a Time Resolved Emission (TRE) microscopy tool.