Laser injection of spot defects on integrated circuits

Abstract

Random spot defects may result in discrete faults such as line breaks and short circuits. Therefore they could contribute significantly to yield losses in stable fabrication lines of VLSI integrated circuits. The authors show how to use laser based equipment to inject such faults at the circuit level. Experimental results carried out on 32 bits microprocessors are presented and point out one of the main applications of this approach: the test sequence improvement.<>