Inspection and failure analysis of large-scale integrated circuits (LSI) have become a critical issue, as there is an increasing demand for quality and reliability in LSIs. Recently, we have proposed a laser THz emission microscope (LTEM) for inspecting electrical failures in LSIs, which detects the THz emission from LSIs by scanning them with femtosecond laser pulses. We successfully obtained the THz emission image of MOSFETs without bias voltage. We also measured MOSFETs in which the

more »

... n lines from the electrodes to the pn junctions were interrupted, and found that the polarity of the temporal waveform of the THz emission from the pn junction in damaged MOSFETs has the opposite sign compared to that in normal MOSFETs. This result indicates that the LTEM can be used for the inspection of MOSFETs without bias voltage, which is attractive for the testing of semiconductor devices during the manufacturing process.