Closed region defect detection system

A method for determining contact defects in a plurality of semiconductor wafer dice, comprising:

• scanning the semiconductor wafer dice using transmitted and reflected light energy, resulting in scanned representations of said semiconductor dice;
• aligning the scanned semiconductor dice;
• selecting approximate potential problem areas on said plurality of scanned semiconductor dice;
• establishing a set of boundaries within each of said scanned semiconductor dice, wherein said establishing comprises locating demarcations of intensity variations;
• and
• comparing fluxes between regions within said sets of boundaries to determine contact defects.

A system for determining defects in a plurality of specimens, comprising:

• at least one sensor for sensing transmitted and reflected light received from each specimen, said sensor transmitting a light intensity representation of one specimen to a computing device, wherein said computing device comprises:
• an aligner for aligning the light intensity representations of a plurality of specimens;
• a critical point selector for selecting general areas for detailed inspection on said light intensity representations of a plurality of specimens;
• a boundary device for creating a set of narrow boundaries around each of said critical points based on light intensity transitions;
• and
• a flux computer for computing the flux associated with the critical points within the narrow boundaries of the light intensity representations.

A method for determining contact defects for arbitrarily shaped contacts in a plurality of semiconductor wafer specimens, comprising:

• scanning the semiconductor wafer specimens using transmitted and reflected light energy scanning, resulting in scanned representations of said semiconductor wafer specimens;
• aligning the scanned semiconductor wafer specimens;
• selecting bounded areas on said plurality of scanned semiconductor wafer specimens;
• establishing a set of boundaries within each of said scanned semiconductor wafer specimen bounded areas, wherein said establishing comprises locating demarcations of intensity variations;
• and
• comparing fluxes between regions within said sets of boundaries to determine contact defects for arbitrarily shaped contacts.