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Characterization of through-silicon vias using laser terahertz emission microscopy

Nature Electronics volume 4, pages 202–207 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) integration could enable device scaling beyond the limits of conventional 2D CMOS technology. Such integration requires vertical electrical connections that pass through silicon substrates and interconnect stacked chips. The fabrication of these through-silicon vias (TSVs) creates new challenges in metrology, including the characterization of the thin isolation film deposited on the sidewalls of the TSVs and thickness characterization for wafer thinning. Here, we show that laser-induced terahertz emission microscopy can be used to characterize TSVs. Terahertz emission is observed through the excitation of a transient electric dipole in the depletion field of the TSV using femtosecond laser pulses. The detected terahertz waveform provides information about the local depletion field and thus structural information about the isolation film. By performing a time-of-flight measurement of the terahertz pulse, we can also extract the silicon wafer thickness.

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Fig. 1: Laser-induced terahertz emission from TSVs.
Fig. 2: Terahertz measurement set-up.
Fig. 3: Time-domain waveforms and Fourier spectra of laser-excited terahertz emission from TSVs.
Fig. 4: Terahertz radiation from TSVs through a laser-induced transient electric dipole process.
Fig. 5: Effect of excitation angle on the laser-excited terahertz emission from TSVs.
Fig. 6: Electric field polarization of the radiated terahertz field.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from imec’s 3D integration team and industrially affiliated partners and thank I. Kawayama for fruitful discussions. K.J.P.J. is grateful to O. Wada for his encouragement and support of this work. This work was partially supported by a scientific research grant (PE18026) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), as well as the JSPS Core-to-Core Program and the FWO.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Imec, Leuven, Belgium

    Kristof J. P. Jacobs & Eric Beyne

  2. Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan

    Hironaru Murakami, Fumikazu Murakami, Kazunori Serita & Masayoshi Tonouchi

Authors
  1. Kristof J. P. Jacobs
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  2. Hironaru Murakami
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  3. Fumikazu Murakami
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  4. Kazunori Serita
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  5. Eric Beyne
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  6. Masayoshi Tonouchi
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Contributions

This work was conceived jointly by K.J.P.J. and M.T. K.J.P.J. and F.M. conducted the experimental work. The experimental apparatus was designed by H.M. and constructed by K.S. and F.M. All authors discussed the results and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Kristof J. P. Jacobs.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Electronics thanks Richard Allen, Kubilay Sertel and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2.

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Jacobs, K.J.P., Murakami, H., Murakami, F. et al. Characterization of through-silicon vias using laser terahertz emission microscopy. Nat Electron 4, 202–207 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-021-00559-z

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