Sebastian Stolwijk

Infrared (IR) microscopy is a powerful tool for defect analysis in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) devices. A steep increase in IR analysis demand combined with the need for high-resolution images generates a vast amount of data. This makes manual image acquisition and inspection nearly impossible or would require an extremely high effort in time and manpower.

The solution we present leverages the automation capability of our IR microscopes and provides a streamlined acquisition and analysis pipeline for IR microscopy analysis for single chips, batches of chips, and full wafers. Automated imaging scans devices at high magnification, stitching the resulting images into high-resolution IR image composites. These composites are then processed by state-of-the-art defect prediction models to accurately identify and mark defects. Our IR microscopy workflow significantly increases throughput, reduces analysis time, and improves the consistency and accuracy of defect detection in our semiconductor devices.

This work has been funded by the German “Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)” in the project FA2IR.

Dr. Sebastian Stolwijk is an analysis engineer and data scientist at Bosch, specializing in the physical failure analysis of MEMS inertial sensors. He holds a PhD in solid-state physics from the University of Münster. His current work at Bosch focuses on automating analysis workflows and applying AI to various physical analysis methods.