Dopant and Thin Film Analysis at Sub-Å Equivalent Thickness

  • We describe a new technique for non-destructive, quantitative measurements of dopants with equivalent thicknesses below 1 Angstrom and high-fidelity measurements of thin films, and with spatial resolutions of 10 μm. The need for such a system is driven by advances in materials science and semiconductor, such as 3D finFETs. Sigray’s AttoMap MicroXRF provides ultra-high sensitivity at high throughput for measurements well below sub-angstrom concentrations for elements such as Hf, Ni, Co, and has demonstrated <1% repeatability for 1-2 nm thicknesses measured within 2 minutes.

  • iPhone Chip

    Phone chip with buried copper (green) layers visualized non-destructively, without removing the epoxy resin covering

  • Rapid Semiconductor Contamination Detection

    Extremely fast scans were performed to locate suspected sulfur contamination of silver resistor conductors.

    Left: A survey scan was first performed to locate the regions of silver.
    Middle: A higher resolution scan was used to locate suspected sulfur contamination.
    Right: Final scan was used to verify and revealed that Silver-sulfide was forming crystals and distorting the silver structure.

    The scans provide a fast and non-destructive alternative to the labor-intensive, destructive cross-sectioning methods employed previously. Moreover, it also pinpointed new unexpected regions of incipient resistor breakdown.