Evalutating the MIL-STD-883B Alternate Die Visual Screen for LSI

Trends towards further miniaturization in very high speed integrated circuits (VHS1C), as well as complex large-scale integrated (LSI) circuits, support the fact that visual inspection will not be able to adequately screen future microcircuits. Method 5004 in MILSTD-883B offers an alternate to the standard method 2010 visual inspection. An evaluation was performed to see if the method 5004 alternate could be implemented on 7 µm technology metal-gate complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) devices while maintaining the same reliability and performance as devices inspected to method 2010 criteria. The results show no degradation in reliability or performance while increasing visual inspection yield by 90 percent and reducing inspection time from 250 to 500 percent.