A New Approach to Failure Analysis and Yield Enhancement of Very Large-scale Integrated Systems

A method of failure analysis is developed based on probability theory. Unlike Monte Carlo methods, it produces accurate results even when the probabilities of interest differ from one another by many orders of magnitude. The method is applied to the analysis of the leakagecurrent distribution of double-gate MOSFETs and the microscopic failure mechanism is identified that limits the final yield. It explains experimental data very well. The insight into the failure mechanism gives clear guidelines for yield enhancement and facilitates device design together with the quantitative yield prediction.