Contact inspection and resistance–capacitance measurement of Si nanowire with SEM voltage contrast

Abstract. A methodology to evaluate the electrical contact between nanowire (NW) and source/drain in NW FETs was investigated with SEM voltage contrast (VC). The electrical defects are robustly detected by VC. The validity of the inspection result was verified by transmission electron microscope (TEM) physical observations. Moreover, estimation of the parasitic resistance and capacitance was achieved from the quantitative analysis of VC images, which are acquired with different scan conditions of an electron beam (EB). A model considering the dynamics of EB-induced charging was proposed to calculate the VC. The resistance and capacitance can be determined by comparing the model-based VC with experimentally obtained VC. Quantitative estimation of resistance and capacitance would be valuable not only for more accurate inspection but also for identification of the defect point.