Battelle Memorial Institute

Applied Research Associates, Inc.

Ohio State Innovation Foundation

Thomas Kent

Katie Liszewski

Anthony George

Jeffrey A Simon

Christian Eakins

Jeremiah J Schley

Russell Gilabert

Timothy McDonley

Isaac Goldthwaite

Blaine Miller

Adam G Kimura

Jeremy Bellay

Jeremiah P Schley

Roberto C Myers

Richard J Higgins

David Maung

An assembly for monitoring a semiconductor device under test comprising a mill configured to mill the device, a sensor configured to measure an electrical characteristic of the device, and a computer configured to determine the amount of strain in the device from the electrical characteristic when the mill is milling the device and detect an endpoint of milling at a circuit within the device. In use the endpoints of the milling process of the semiconductor device are detected measuring an electrical characteristic of the device with a sensor during milling determining the amount of strain in the device from the electrical characteristic and detecting an endpoint of the milling process within the device based on the amount of strain.

Assembly and method for performing in-situ endpoint detection when backside milling silicon based devices

Systems and methods for measuring unique microelectronic electromagnetic signatures are provided. A method includes injecting a nondestructive signal as input into a port of an object. The method may further include receiving as output from a signal path within the object a unique frequency dependent complex spectrum comprising a reflection spectrum or a transmission spectrum. The method may also include generating a unique object signature based upon the port and the received spectrum. The method may still further include differentiating the object from a different object based upon a comparison of the unique object signature of each.

Systems and methods for measuring unique microelectronic electromagnetic signatures

In an optical carrier injection method, a pulsed optical beam having pulse duration of 900 fs or lower is applied on a backside of a substrate of an integrated circuit (IC) wafer or chip, and is focused at a focal point in an active layer on a frontside of the substrate. Photons of the optical beam are absorbed at the focal point by nonlinear optical interaction(s) to inject carriers. The pulsed optical beam may be applied using a fiber laser in which the fiber is doped with Yb and/or Er. An output signal may be measured, comprising an electrical signal or a light output signal produced by the IC wafer or chip in response to the injected carriers. By repeating the applying, focusing, and measuring over a grid of focal points in the active layer, an image of the IC wafer or chip may be generated.

Systems and methods for precise signal injection into microelectronic devices

In an imaging method, a focal point of a focused optical beam is sequentially mechanically positioned at coarse locations in or on an integrated circuit (IC) wafer or chip. At each coarse location, a two-dimensional (2D) image or mapping tile is acquired by steering the focal point to fine locations on or in the IC wafer or chip using electronic beam steering and, with the focal point positioned at each fine location, acquiring an output signal produced in response to an electrical charge that is optically injected into the IC wafer or chip at the fine location by the focused optical beam. The 2D image or mapping tiles are combined, including stitching together overlapping 2D image or mapping tiles, to generate an image or mapping of the IC wafer or chip. The electronic beam steering may be performed using a galvo mirror. The set of coarse locations may span a three-dimensional (3D) volume.

High resolution imaging of microelectronic devices

A method of designing a robust integrated circuit that is not vulnerable to optical fault injection comprises training a variational autoencoder to identify regions in a target integrated circuit that are vulnerable to optical fault injection and altering the design of the target integrated circuit by altering the design of the vulnerable regions so that the target integrated circuit is no longer vulnerable to optical fault injection, thereby forming the robust integrated circuit.

Method of identifying vulnerable regions in an integrated circuit

A multimodal inspection system (MIS) is disclosed herein. The MIS may use one or more modalities to inspect a sample. Some of the modalities include, but are not limited to, Raman, visible (VIS), terahertz (THz) spectroscopy, longwave infrared (LWIR), shortwave infrared (SWIR), laser profilometry (LP), electromagnetic interference (EMI) near field probing, and/or, Millimeter Wave (MMW) radar.

Multimodal inspection system

A multispectral inspection (MSI) device for analyzing an electronic item having a printed circuit board (PCB). An electronic power supply powers the electronic item in accordance with one or more test vectors. An optical imaging scanner, terahertz (THz) imaging scanner, and a functional imaging scanner are each operative to scan the electronic item. An electronic processor is programmed to scan the various scanners and control the power supply to acquire optical, THz, and functional images of the electronic item. The images are combined to form a standard three-dimensional (3D) signature and artificial intelligence (AI) classifiers are applied to the 3D signature to perform non-destructive analyses of the electronic item.

System and method for rapid inspection of printed circuit board using multiple modalities

A diode comprises nanowires compositionally graded along their lengths with an active region doped with gadolinium sandwiched between first and second compositionally graded AlGaN nanowire regions. The first graded AlGaN nanowire region is graded from gallium-rich to aluminum-rich with the compositional grading defining n-type polarization doping and the aluminum-rich end proximate the active region. The second graded AlGaN nanowire region is graded from aluminum-rich to gallium-rich with the compositional grading defining p-type polarization doping and with the aluminum rich end proximate the active region. The active region may include a GdN layer sandwiched between AlN layers, or an AlGdN layer with y&#x2267;0.5. The nanowires may be disposed on a silicon substrate having a GaN surface, with the gallium-rich end of the first graded AlGaN nanowire region proximate to the GaN surface, and a semitransparent electrical contact disposed on the gallium-rich end of the second graded AlGaN nanowire region.

Growing community of inventors

Columbus, OH, United States of America

Thomas Kent