Patent ID: 8306309

Claim:
A method for detecting mechanical defects in a semiconductor device, having at least one pn junction in a semiconductor layer formed of a semiconductor material that is characterized by an indirect band junction; said method comprising: applying to the at least one pn junction, a voltage for operating the pn junction in a transmitting direction; optically detecting and analyzing radiation behavior of the semiconductor layer generated by the applied voltage, at least for partial ranges of the semiconductor layer; and performing at least one of the following, i) automatically examining the radiation behavior of the semiconductor layer for abrupt substantially one-dimensional changes of intensity along the semiconductor layer, and identifying detected intensity changes as mechanical defects of the semiconductor device by an image processing unit; and ii) automatically integrating radiation intensity of at least a first partial range of a first semiconductor layer, automatically comparing a resulting integral with an integral of radiation intensity of at least one comparison range of the same semiconductor layer or of a second semiconductor layer, and identifying the first partial range as either defective or free of defects, based on a result of an automatic comparison of the two integrals, by the image processing unit.