Studies and applications of standardless EDX quantification method in failure analysis of wafer fabrication

Energy-dispersive X-ray microanalysis technique has been widely used in failure analysis of wafer fabrication. However, we still face some common problems. In this study, we introduce standardless element coefficients to improve accuracy of quantitative results, propose an estimating method to select beam acceleration voltage & demonstrate application cases and discuss identification methods of the spectra overlapped. The accuracy of EDX results have been improved, for example, the relative error Si3N4 layer is reduced from (-67.5% ~ +101%) to (-2.83% ~ +3.93%).