Patent ID: 6516433
Filing Date: 2003-02-04
Classification: H01L

Abstract:
A method for locating root causes of a failure of a faulty chip, the faulty chip being fabricated by a plurality of processes, the faulty chip comprising at least one defect which is detected after one of the plurality of processes, the at least one defect being at least one of a defect location, a defect size and a defect type, the faulty chip being tested to identify at least one real region which electronically failed, the method comprising the steps of:performing defect-to-failure matching based on characteristics of the defect to generate a predicted failure region that is likely to have electronically failed due to the defect; influenced-range-searching for the defect based on the defect location to respectively predict the failure range of the predicted failure region relative to the defect; and comparing the predicted failure region of the at least one defect with the real region which electronically failed; wherein, if the predicted failure generated from the defect is located in the at least one real region which electronically failed, then the defect is one of the root causes of the failure of the faulty chip; the at least one real region which electronically failed being a failure type and a failure range, and the defect-to-failure matching step comprises type-searching for the defect based on the defect size and the defect type to respectively predict the failure type of the predicted failure region relative to the defect.