Materials Analysis Technology Inc.

C-AFM

Technical Concept

The principle of C-AFM and AFM is very similar. The AFM consists of a microscale cantilever with a sharp tip (probe) at its end that is used to scan the specimen surface with demonstrated resolution of fractions of a nanometer . The precursor to the AFM, the scanning tunneling microscope, was developed by Gerd Binning and Heinrich Rohrer in the early 1980s, a development that earned them the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1986. Binnig, Quate and Gerber invented the first AFM in 1986. When the tip is brought into proximity of a sample surface, forces between the tip and the sample lead to a deflection of the cantilever according to Hooke's law. Depending on the situation, forces that are measured in AFM include mechanical contact force, Van der waals forces, capillary forces, chemical bonding, electrostatic forces, magnetic forces, Casimir forces, solvation forces etc.

The C-AFM provides voltage bias while the tip is scanning the specimen surface. We can obvious observed the current intensity of each conduction via or contact by different contrast and find out the abnormal sites through comparison.

Equipment Capacity

Veeco INNOVA

Application

It can be used in failure analysis of leakage or higher resistance contact, junction leakage, gate oxide leakage and etc.
To discriminate various contact types (P+/N+/Poly CT).
To diagnose the failure mechanism by comparing I/V curves of different contact types.
To provide I-V information of specific point.

C-AFM gets topography by contact Mode and gets current signal simultaneously.