Current leakage measurement

A non destructive, non contact method for detecting current leakage of a gate dielectric film in a transistor on a monolithic semiconductor integrated circuit production substrate, the method comprising the steps of:

• repeatedly irradiating the film with an electron beam, thereby causing the film to emit x-rays,
• detecting the emitted x-rays with an x-ray detector,
• counting the detected x-rays emitted with each repeated irradiation of the film to produce an x-ray count rate,
• determining a trend of the x-ray count rate, and
• determining the current leakage of the film from the trend of the x-ray count rate.

A non destructive, non contact method for detecting current leakage of a gate dielectric film in a transistor on a monolithic semiconductor integrated circuit production substrate, the method comprising the steps of:

• repeatedly irradiating the film with an electron beam, thereby causing the film to emit x-rays,
• detecting the emitted x-rays with an x-ray detector, wherein the electron beam and the x-ray detector are provided by a spectrometer of a type used for determining elemental composition of the film, and the x-rays are detected at both a nitrogen band energy level and an oxygen band energy level,
• counting the detected x-rays emitted with each repeated irradiation of the film to produce an x-ray count rate,
• determining a trend of the x-ray count rate, and
• determining the current leakage of the film from the trend of the x-ray count rate,
• wherein a trend of decreasing x-ray count rates indicates a relatively low current leakage of the film, and a trend of stable x-ray count rates indicates a relatively high current leakage of the film.