Laser-induced hot carrier injection (HCI) for accelerated aging of integrated circuits
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsRicardo Ascazubi, Georgia Modoran
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Laser-assisted integrated circuit (IC) device testing apparatus capable of inducing hot carrier injection (HCI) within selected transistors of an IC device. A laser source of sufficiently high output power (e.g., 1 W) and short pulse duration (e.g., 100 fs) can generate enough hot carriers through a multi-photon (e.g., TPA) carrier injection mechanism to significantly accelerate HCI aging even at low transistor voltage bias (e.g., <1.5V). Rapid laser-assisted HCI transistor aging can selectively degrade transistors of individual functional IC blocks within an IC device.
Claims20
An integrated circuit (IC) device testing apparatus, comprising:
- a stage comprising an area to support an IC device under test (DUT);
- an electrical test interface to induce an electric field within one or more transistors of the DUT;
- a laser source to output a beam of photons;
- and
- a controller to irradiate the one or more transistors with the beam for a duration sufficient to induce their measurable degradation from charge carriers originated by the beam and accelerated by the electric field.
A method of aging one or more transistors of an integrated circuit (IC) device, the method comprising:
- inducing an electric field within the transistors of the IC device;
- generating a beam of photons with a laser source;
- generating charge carriers within the electric field by irradiating the transistors with the beam of photons for a duration sufficient to induce a measurable degradation of the transistors.
A method of testing an integrated circuit (IC) device, the method comprising:
- operating a first instance of a functional IC block under first conditions for a first time period;
- performing laser-based hot carrier aging of a second instance of the functional IC block for a second time period, shorter than the first time period;
- correlating a laser irradiation time to a normal use time by mapping a performance parameter degradation of the second instance of the functional IC block to that of the first instance of the functional IC block.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.