Soft Defect Localization of Hot Failure by Dynamic Analysis by Laser Stimulation using Hamamatsu iPhemos

One of the recent challenges in the field of failure analysis is the fault isolation of devices which only fail on specified region of temperature, frequency, and voltage. Soft defect localization is used for the fault isolation of such cases. In this paper, the Dynamic Analysis by Laser Stimulation (DALS) of Hamamatsu iPhemos was utilized to pinpoint the location of the physical defect of a dual overvoltage/ undervoltage comparator device that fails at hot temperature but passes at room and cold temperatures. Results revealed that DALS was able to successfully localize the failure site and component compared to the more commonly used Photo Emission Microscopy (PEM) technique.