A novel methodology for passive voltage contrast fault isolation on ultra thin gate oxide failure

As well-know, when doing the failure analysis, it is necessary to firstly locate the fault site, and traditional PVC is a popular method for fault localization. But when the cases come to the ultra-thin gate oxide failure, the traditional PVC is no longer an effective one since the difference in failure mechanism between the HV and LV gate oxide. In this paper, a novel method for ultra thin gate oxide failure analysis is proposed and a model is setup to explain the mechanism. Also in the practice application, the new method is verified and from the results we see that it can be a very effective method for fault localization on ultra-thin gate oxide failure analysis.