A speckle shearing interferometric system is proposed for real-time inspecting sub-surface defects of unpolished silicon wafer. Under dynamic thermal loading, derivative distribution of out-of-plane displacement along a shear direction is measured and homogeneity and regularity of the distribution is indicator of whether impurities or voids exist under the wafer surface. During a continuous thermal stressing, a sequence of speckle patterns are obtained and phase analysis is implemented in time domain. In this paper, the validity of the method for non-destructive testing of sub-surface defects of silicon wafers has been demonstrated.
The present work relates to surface and/or subsurface defects inspection system for semiconductor industries and particularly to an inspection system for a defect such as swirl defects and particles in an unpolished silicon wafer before the wafer fabrication process by a combined fiber optic digital shearography and holography technique. The dual purpose camera described in this paper gives the possibility of using either digital shearography or holography (DSPI) techniques depending on application needs. The sub-surface defects in a wafer normally create strain concentrations subjected to loading (stressing) which are translated into anomalies in the fringe pattern. A real time technique with the use of Lab view Express 7 software is developed to detect defects in Si-wafer with the application of thermal oading as a stressing method. The results obtained by applying a real time fiber optic shearography technique are described in this paper. The method described here relates specifically to semiconductor wafers, but may be generalized to any other samples.
Silicon wafers are widely used in semiconductor and microelectronics industries. With this material, there is an immense need to obtain defect free highly polished surface for improved yield and performance of the micro-components. The Semiconductor Industry Association's (SIA) International Technology Roadmap specifies that by 2005, 30 nm particles must be detectable on bare silicon and non-metallic films, 39 nm particles on metallic films, and 100 nm particles on wafer backsides, for which no solutions currently exist. Both surface and subsurface defects decrease reliability and manufacturing yield of semiconductor devices. Understanding the defect nature, their cause and minimization are equally important to the semiconductor industries. The present work reports on the characterization of these defects by white light phase shifting interferometry.
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