Patent ID: 8589108

Claim:
A semiconductor device failure analysis method comprising: an observation image acquisition process of charging an exposed conductive layer of a semiconductor device and irradiating the conductive layer with charged particles to acquire an observation image of the conductive layer having a voltage contrast; a layout acquisition process of acquiring a layout pattern of the conductive layer on the observation image from design data about the semiconductor device; a wiring search process of searching for wiring end points connected to the layout pattern; a brightness acquisition process of acquiring brightness levels of the observation image corresponding to the layout pattern searched for in the wiring search process; a brightness association process of creating in advance a table indicating a correspondence relationship between three or more brightness levels of an observation image and wiring end points connected to a layout pattern corresponding to the observation image to associate the brightness levels and wiring end points; a determination process of determining whether the observation image brightness levels acquired in the brightness acquisition process and the wiring end points searched for in the wiring search process are consistent with the table indicating a correspondence relationship between brightness levels and wiring end points associated in the brightness association process; and an output process of outputting results of the determination process, wherein the brightness acquisition process comprises: a figure detection process of executing an image process to extract edges in the observation image and detect figurative elements of the image; a multiple brightness level setting process of setting brightness thresholds and using the brightness thresholds as references to set three or more brightness levels and assign each pixel of the observation image with one of the brightness levels; a figure brightness detection process of detecting the brightness levels set in the multiple brightness level setting process and assigned to the individual pixels of each of the figurative elements detected in the figure detection process and determining a majority brightness level of each of the figurative elements to be the brightness level of the figurative element; and a figure brightness acquisition process of extracting figurative elements corresponding to the layout pattern from the figurative elements detected in the figure detection process and extracting brightness levels detected in the figure brightness detection process.