Semiconductor Packaging Inspection Achieves Both Performance and Speed at Once

Inspecting an Area 100 Times Larger at Once
Detecting Surface Micro Defects. Industry's First Adoption Expected

These are the experimental results applying the newly developed measurement technology. The measurement results of the USAF target, which is the standard sample used to determine the resolution of optical devices, show amplitude on the left and phase on the right.

[Asia Economy Reporter Junho Hwang] A precision measurement technology capable of detecting microscopic defects on the surfaces of advanced components such as semiconductors with a resolution at the scale of hundreds of nanometers (one billionth of a meter) has been developed. Heekyung Ahn, a senior researcher at the Advanced Measurement Equipment Research Center of the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS), announced on the 14th that this technology was developed and that the related research paper was recently published in the international journal Optics and Lasers in Engineering.

The research team developed a measurement method that observes surfaces more precisely than equipment equipped with 100x lenses commonly used in the industry, while also covering an area about 100 times larger in a single observation and reducing analysis time. The core of this technology lies in calculating the error for only one semiconductor piece and applying the result to all pieces. Using this technology, a 1 mm × 1 mm image can be inspected at a resolution below 250 nanometers in just 16 minutes. Previously, this task took 3 hours with existing technology.

Senior researcher Heekyung Ahn said, "As semiconductor packaging becomes more miniaturized, there is a growing demand for technologies that can meticulously inspect defects such as surface scratches occurring during the production process," adding, "If this newly developed technology is further optimized with techniques like parallel processing, it is expected to be immediately applicable in industrial fields requiring resolutions below hundreds of nanometers, such as surface inspection of semiconductors and displays."

Meanwhile, semiconductor packaging refers to the technology that connects a semiconductor chip, where circuits are designed, to transmit electrical characteristics and safely protect it from external environments (shock, moisture).

This is the measurement result of the integrated circuit inside the smartphone. Compared to b1, c1, d1, e1 (measured with a 100x microscope), it can be confirmed that the fine patterns indicated by the arrows in b2, c2, d2, e2 (measured using KRISS's measurement technology) are observed much more clearly.

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