Optical Scanning Techniques for Semiconductor Device Screening and Identification of Surface and Junction Phenomena

An insight into optical beam induced current microscopy: Concepts and applications

“…A design of a typical OBIC microscope is shown in Figure 1(i). Remarkably, in one of the pioneering works, Wilson et al (Wilson et al, 1979) imaged the dislocations contained in a semiconductor specimen with a PN‐junction by using both SOM based OBIC and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) based EBIC and obtained identical spatial resolution ~1 μm with penetration depth of 0.5 μm, which was superior to the contemporaneous imaging techniques (Haberer, 1966; Potter & Sawyer, 1966; Suzuki & Matsumoto, 1975). The comparative OBIC and EBIC images, obtained in this work, is shown in Figure 1(ii).…”

“…Notably, in order to monitor the spatial variation of carrier lifetime and resistivity inhomogeneities in plain semiconductor surfaces, metal oxide semiconductor (MOS), Schottky barrier or electrolyte contacts are used to sense the photoresponse (Drugge & Nordlander, 1980; Lile & Davis, 1975). A number of strategies were also demonstrated for scanning the optical beam on the sample surface (Khanna et al, 1984; Potter & Sawyer, 1966; Sastry et al, 1985; Sawyer & Kessler, 1980; Sheppard et al, 1978). Saparin et al (Saparin et al, 1980) employed a semiconductor laser screen‐based cathode ray tube (CRT) with electron beam excitation to produce a scanning laser beam for conducting OBIC microscopy on transistors.…”

“…The first applications of OBIC microscopy were demonstrated during 1960s–1980s. During this period, several seminal works demonstrated the efficiency and importance of OBIC imaging technique in elucidating the nonuniformities and defects in semiconductors, for example, grain boundaries, inversion layers, dislocations, or recombination centers and characteristic properties of semiconductor devices, including inversion channel formation, minority carrier lifetime, surface recombination velocity, and carrier generation depth (DiStefano & Cuomo, 1977; Gannaway & Wilson, 1978; Haberer, 1966; Inoue et al, 1979; Potter & Sawyer, 1966; Sawyer & Berning, 1976; Sheppard, 1989; Sheppard et al, 1978; Stanciu et al, 1980; Suzuki & Matsumoto, 1975; Tihanyi & Pásztor, 1967). Over the last few years, tremendous advances occurred in both the optics and electronics used in OBIC instrumentation, that enabled non‐destructive characterization of semiconductor devices with unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution, as discussed in the following sections (Finkeldey et al, 2017; Takeshita et al, 2018).…”

“…The first applications of OBIC microscopy were demonstrated during 1960s-1980s. During this period, several seminal works demonstrated the efficiency and importance of OBIC imaging technique in elucidating the nonuniformities and defects in semiconductors, for example, grain boundaries, inversion layers, dislocations, or recombination centers and characteristic properties of semiconductor devices, including inversion channel formation, minority carrier lifetime, surface recombination velocity, and carrier generation depth (DiStefano & Cuomo, 1977;Haberer, 1966;Inoue et al, 1979;Potter & Sawyer, 1966;Sawyer & Berning, 1976;Sheppard, 1989;Sheppard et al, 1978;Stanciu et al, 1980;Suzuki & Matsumoto, 1975;Tihanyi & Pásztor, 1967).…”