Advances in magnetic-based current imaging for high resistance defects and sub-micron resolution

For several years, magnetic-based current imaging has been used to localize current leakages and shorts by imaging currents in integrated circuits and packages. Recent advances have enabled this technology to be extended to localizing high resistance defects in packages to within 30 /spl mu/m, an order of magnitude better than time-domain reflectometry. This is done in a non-contact, non-destructive way. For die-level applications, advances have been made to enable this technology to achieve < 300 nm resolution.