Building-in reliability into VLSI junctions

A nondestructive test is presented for monitoring junction quality and reliability in a manufacturing environment. Using a properly selected two-temperature measurement of the activation energy associated with reverse-biased junction leakage, it was demonstrated that the activation energy was more sensitive to slight changes in junction quality than was the commonly used method of monitoring the ideality factor. The activation energy method was found to be an effective and efficient metric for controlling normal process variation. As such, this method was found to be an excellent tool for building-in quality and reliability into junctions.