Two-photon laser-assisted device alteration in CMOS integrated circuits using linearly, circularly and radially polarized light

Abstract

The rapidly developing semiconductor industry demands constant innovations in optoelectronic imaging of semiconductor integrated circuits to keep up with continuing device scaling. It was recently shown that two-photon laser-assisted device alteration (2pLADA) can deliver precision fault isolation. Here we describe an investigation into the influence of the incident light polarization on the 2pLADA spatial resolution. Linear polarization provides a highly confined but elliptical focal spot, while circular polarization diminishes the lateral resolution but benefits from a symmetrical focal spot. Radially polarized light potentially provides the highest lateral imaging resolution in all directions at the expense of the longitudinal resolution. By comparing 2pLADA results obtained using linear, circular and radial polarizations we show that certain polarizations have advantages in particular applications. Therefore a polarization optimized 2pLADA tool can achieve a sufficiently high performance to isolate faults of transistors separated by as little as 100 nm and maybe smaller.

Highly efficient Yb:YAG microchip laser for direct generation of radially polarized vector vortices

“…Radially polarized laser beam is one of distinguished CV beams and has unique tightly focusing property [2,3]. Radially polarized beams have been widely used in optical trapping [4][5][6][7], optical tweezers [8], material processing [9][10][11][12], nonlinear dynamic [13], formation of vortex arrays [14], and so on. Various methods such as using photonic crystal grating [15], Brewster angle prism [16] have been proposed to generate radially polarized beams in solid state lasers.…”