Near-field antenna as a Scanning Microwave Probe for characterization of materials and devices

The Scanning Microwave Probe (SMP) is emerging as an important broadband metrology tool for characterizing materials and devices in the micron and sub-micron length scales in the frequency range of 10 MHz to 110 GHz. In this document we establish three important characteristics of SMP: 1) the sensitivity of this tool to the materials properties by showing data in the conductivity range of 0 to 2000 S/cm in a stratified medium; 2) the breaking of the λ/2 barrier for spatial-resolution where we report measurement of 1µm spatially resolved features at the frequency of 4.6 GHz on SiGe sample; and 3) detection of sub-surface structures under 2 metal layers in an 8-layer CMOS IC with a measured 0.3% change in Q-factor at 1.8 GHz.