Physical Failure Analysis techniques for Cu/low k technology

In this work, physical FA techniques including deprocessing and cross section analysis have been developed and applied to Cu/low k technology. Deprocessing techniques discussed include: wet chemical etching, reactive ion etching (RIE), parallel polishing, chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) and combination of these techniques. For the cross-section analysis of copper/low k samples, focused ion beam and mechanical polishing techniques have been developed and studied. Failure Analysis (FA) challenges and new failure modes, reliability issues will also be addressed.