tag: Bruker

E-Beam Inspection Proves Essential For Advanced Nodes
By Gregory Haley - 08 May, 2025 - Comments: 0

Electron-beam inspection is proving to be indispensable for finding critical defects at sub-5nm dimensions. The challenge now is how to speed up the process to make it economically palatable to fabs. E-beam inspection's notorious sensitivity-throughput tradeoff has made comprehensive defect coverage with e-beam at these advanced nodes especially problematic. For Intel’s 18A logic node (~1.... » read more

Atomic Force Microscopy: The Definitive AFM Modes Handbook
By Bruker - 08 May, 2025 - Comments: 0

This handbook illustrates the wide variety of operating modes available on Bruker AFMs, going well beyond the standard high‑resolution topographic imaging capabilities of AFM. The modes are broken into seven separate categories: morphology, electromagnetic properties, thermal properties, mechanical properties, chemical properties, electrochemical properties, and manipulation. Each category be... » read more

Why Thin Film Measurements Matter
By Laura Peters - 08 Apr, 2025 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor devices are becoming thinner and more complex, making thin deposited films even harder to measure and control. With 3nm node devices in production and 2nm nodes ramping toward first-silicon, the importance of precise film measurement is only growing in significance as fabs seek to maintain the performance and reliability of leading-edge devices. Whether it’s the read and writ... » read more

Nearly Invisible: Defect Detection Below 5nm
By Gregory Haley - 08 Apr, 2025 - Comments: 0

Detecting sub-5nm defects creates huge challenges for chipmakers, challenges that have a direct impact on yield, reliability, and profitability. In addition to being smaller and harder to detect, defects are often hidden beneath intricate device structures and packaging schemes. Moreover, traditional optical and electrical probing methods, trusted for decades, are proving inadequate against ... » read more

Hunting For Macro Defects
By Anne Meixner - 08 Apr, 2025 - Comments: 0

Detecting macro-defects early in the wafer processing flow is vital for yield and process improvement, and it is driving innovations in both inspection techniques and wafer test map analysis. At the wafer level, a macro-defect can affect more than one die, and in some cases large regions of a wafer. Finding macro defects can indicate a significant issue with a process module, a particular fi... » read more

Automation And AI Improve Failure Analysis
By Laura Peters - 11 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

When a chip malfunctions it’s the job of the failure analysis engineer to determine how it failed or significantly deviated from its key performance metrics. The cost of failure in the field can be huge in terms of downtime, recalls, damage to a company’s reputation, and more. For these reasons, chipmakers take customer returns very seriously, focusing resources to quickly get to the bot... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review
By The SE Staff - 07 Feb, 2025 - Comments: 0

The chip industry is well on its way to hit $1 trillion in revenue by the end of its decade. Several analyst firms released 2024 annual results and 2025 predictions: Worldwide semiconductor revenue reached $626 billion in 2024, an 18% increase versus 2023, according to preliminary Gartner report. Memory revenue grew about 70%  2024 versus 2023. The firm forecasts that HBM will make up 19%... » read more

Using Test And Metrology Data For Dynamic Process Control
By Gregory Haley - 14 Jan, 2025 - Comments: 0

Advanced packaging is transforming semiconductor manufacturing into a multi-dimensional challenge, blending 2D front-end wafer fabrication with 2.5D/3D assemblies, high-frequency device characterization, and complex yield optimization strategies. These combinations are essential to improving performance and functionality, but they create some thorny issues for which there are no easy fixes. ... » read more

Screening For Known Good Interposers
By Anne Meixner - 14 Jan, 2025 - Comments: 0

Ensuring the quality of silicon and organic interposers is becoming harder as the number of signals passing through them continues to grow, fueled by more chiplets, higher processing demands, and more layers of devices assembled in a package. Interposers initially were viewed as relatively simple conduits. That perception has changed rather dramatically in recent years with the growing focus... » read more

Gas Analysis For A Greener Tomorrow
By Antonia Eckert - 10 Dec, 2024 - Comments: 0

In our quest for a sustainable future, monitoring and managing air quality and greenhouse gases have become more critical than ever. Advanced technology plays a pivotal role in this endeavor. By providing the tools needed to understand and mitigate environmental impacts, we aim towards a greener tomorrow. The MGA Series from MIRO Analytical are laser-based gas analyzers designed for prec... » read more

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