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News Release from: Keithley Instruments | Subject: Model 4200-SCS Hot Carrier System
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 26 September 2001
Tester seeks out hot carrier induced
faults
Keithley Instruments has a new version of its Model 4200-SCS semiconductor characterisation system that reduces the time required to test for hot carrier induced (HCI) degradation effects.
Keithley Instruments has a new version of its Model 4200-SCS semiconductor characterisation system that reduces the time required to test for hot carrier induced (HCI) degradation effects Keithley's Model 4200-SCS Hot Carrier System is a fully integrated set of hardware and software that eliminates device packaging costs and delays, allowing accurate HCI degradation testing as soon as wafers are produced
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 19 Jun 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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The hardware includes high accuracy source-measure units (SMUs), a switch matrix and multisite probe card.
The 4200-SCS-HCI software module has an intuitive point-and-click interface that allows users to combine a variety of stress levels and highly sensitive measurements for accurate device characterization.
Easy-to-use Microsoft Excel based analysis tools quickly produce HCI lifetime projections that comply with JEDEC standards JESD 29 and 60.
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The Model 4200-SCS Hot Carrier System is an extension of Keithley's line of Model 4200-SCS semiconductor characterisation systems, used by product designers and process engineers to measure critical device characteristics on semiconductor wafers.
Applications include product development, production, reliability testing, failure analysis and incoming inspection.
This addition to the Keithley 4200 Series adds important new test capabilities that allow fast, accurate projections HCI degradation over 10 to 20 year periods.
Many semiconductor reliability tests monitor a critical performance parameter that degrades at a rate proportional to the time a device is exposed to voltage and temperature stresses.
Usually, a test must "prove" the device under test (DUT) will not have more than a 10% drift in the critical performance parameter over the expected product lifetime.
Although certain techniques have been used to accelerate these tests, they are limited by a lack of certainty as to the failure mechanisms caused by HCI degradation, and by the amount of stress that can be applied to the DUT without causing catastrophic failure.
To overcome these limitations, Keithley developed an accelerated test technique for its Model 4200-SCS that imposes only normal operating conditions on the DUT, and does not require knowledge of the failure mechanism.
Typically, this technique can shorten a test cycle by a factor of three or more.
The Model 4200-SCS Hot Carrier System takes advantage of the 4200 Series' low noise floor and excellent time resolution, which are required for accurate results in this type of testing.
The HCI test algorithm measures the time to reach a small (under 10%) degradation under specified use conditions.
Since the rate of degradation is generally linear in the log time domain, a small change in degradation over a short test period can be used to project degradation over a future period.
The test algorithm projects degradation over a number of time decades similar to the number of decades used to collect data.
This provides an accurate degradation projection for a 10 to 20 year time span, even though actual data collection time can be as short as a few seconds.
The Model 4200-SCS Hot Carrier System hardware can be configured with up to eight Keithley source-measure units (SMUs).
When paired with an appropriate wafer prober, the same voltage and temperature stress conditions can be used as when testing packaged semiconductors.
The system can be used with a multi-site parallel probe card to allow compatibility with existing test structure layouts.
Each SMU can force or measure voltage from 0.1uV to +/-200V, as well as measure currents from 1fA to 1A with optional remote preamps.
This allows accurate lifetime projections with DUT degradations as low as 1%, while requiring only a few seconds of test time.
The Hot Carrier System's software has an intuitive user interface that simplifies setting device parameters, stress conditions, and failure criteria.
A percent drift failure criterion can be specified for any or all critical performance parameters, including linear drain current, threshold voltage, transconductance, subthreshold slope, and up to six others.
The user can also specify a termination of test criterion, such as a percent drift, number of readpoints, or maximum stress time.
Software analysis tools are based on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and automated macros that make it easy to extract lifetime projections with just a few mouse-clicks.
Test results are ported automatically to a spreadsheet, where a macro is used to display degradation for each device as a function of time.
Other macros fit a line to the data, project a time to a specified percent degradation, and calculate HCI lifetime at specified use condition. Request a free brochure from Keithley Instruments ...
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