AVS 53rd International Symposium
    Applied Surface Science Monday Sessions
       Session AS-MoA

Paper AS-MoA6
High Spatial Resolution XPS and AES Applied to the Understanding of Interfacial Delamination in Microelectronics

Monday, November 13, 2006, 3:40 pm, Room 2005

Session: Developing Methods for Data Analysis
Presenter: H. Piao, General Electric Co.
Authors: H. Piao, General Electric Co.
L. Le Tarte, General Electric Co.
N. Fairley, Casa Software Ltd.
Correspondent: Click to Email
X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES) are the most widely used techniques for quantitative surface analysis. XPS is mainly dedicated to the identification of chemical composition/bonding on surfaces, while the high spatial resolution in AES has made it an established technique for determining the localized defects or other features distributed on surfaces. Although the spatial resolution in XPS has been much inferior to that in AES, the recent development of XPS instrumentation with near-micron spatial resolution has advanced the capability of elemental and chemical state imaging accompanied by small area analysis.@footnote 1@ The goal of this presentation is to show how the combined uses of XPS and AES at enhanced spatial resolution have significantly improved the understanding of interfacial delamination and related problems encountered in the production of electronic devices in the field of microelectronics. A few examples of the application of surface analysis for adhesion problems will be presented. In the presentation, the mathematical procedure using Principle Component Analysis (PCA) in the reduction of noise in XPS images@footnote 2@ will also be described. The purpose of the PCA is to identify the abstract factor images containing significant information and reconstruct the images only using these factors without noise, therefore resulting in the set of images with enhanced signal-to-noise. The dramatic improvements in the image contrast and chemical component determination from multi-spectral image data sets will be demonstrated. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@D. Briggs and J.T. Grant, Surface Analysis by Auger and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, Surface Spectra/IMPublications, 2003.@footnote 2@N. Fairley and A. Carrick, The Casa Cookbook, Acolyte Science, 2005.