As micro-circuitry design nodes continue to become smaller, in rough accordance with "Moore's Law", the challenges presented to failure analysis and process development labs continue to grow. Often, regions and features of interest are buried beneath layers of passivation, metal interconnect, or silicon that makes Focused Ion Beam (FIB) or Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) imaging difficult and tedious. Use of a FIB or SEM allows only shallow visual penetration into the surface and often makes actions on deeper sub-surface features a "shot-in-the-dark". As a result, researchers' ability to meet time, quality, and budget demands become increasingly stressed.
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