Determination of Defect Size Distributions Based on Electrical Measurements at a Novel Harp Test Structure

To improve accuracy of electrically based measurements of defect densities and defect size distributions, we present a novel harp test structure. There, horizontal and vertical parallel lines will be placed inside a given boundary pad frame without using any additional active semiconductor devices. The enhanced 2D-permutation sequence provides that all neighborhood relationships of adjacent test structure lines are unique. This is the key to disentangle even multiple faults detected by fast digital measurements. For this reason, the number and size of individual defects will be extracted anywhere inside or in-between layers.