Defect-Directed Stress Testing Based on Inline Inspection Results

Inline defect screening methods are becoming increasingly common—especially for automotive applications. In addition to the base application of scrapping dies with high levels of inline defectivity, there are many other potential applications in which this data can be used to inform downstream die disposition decisions. In this paper, we present an adaptive stress testing methodology in which inline defect data is used to direct targeted stress testing (i.e., burn-in) at the die level. As demonstrated by silicon results, this method will help IC makers find the best tradeoff among stress/test coverage, reliability, and cost.