SBIR-STTR Award

Detecting counterfeit electronics is an important area of rising concern for DOD, other federal agencies and the private sector. The advent of cloned chips has called for development of new inspection tools that are capable of inspecting microelectronics down to the nanometer length scale. The state-of-the-art technology in Microscopy currently lacks a one-size-fits-all microelectronics inspection solution. The miniaturization trends in 3D packages with various material compositions only add to the complexity. At the die level, the length scale is increasingly shrinking. Smaller node technologies of ten, seven and smaller nanometer scale demand modern inspection and delayering tools with higher throughput and precision resolution requirements. The proposed project addresses the limitations of current integrated circuit (IC) analysis approaches by developing an integrated high-performance instrument and algorithm suite that will achieve substantial improvements in speed and accuracy. The proposed approach features ultrafast nanomachining sample preparation techniques using ultrafast lasers, advanced imaging technologies, and real-time 3D image enhancement capabilities to meet the challenges of high-speed analysis of emerging ICs. Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms are then leveraged to automate the process and eliminate the subjective nature of the analysis.