Nanoparticles and plasmon resonance based probe for failure analysis of ULSI microchips and electrical characterizations of metallic interconnects

In this paper, we present the concept of novel contact-free probe enabling to obtain high accuracy electrical characterizations of interconnection lines within working ULSI microchips. The probe consists of a tapered optical fiber and a certain structure of metallic nanorods (ferromagnetic and nonmagnetic) located within a hole drilled inside the fiber. Using the proposed probe, the waveform of electrical currents is reproduced from the change in the scattering cross section of two interacted metallic nanorods.