Research by Fondazione Bruno Kessler on Strategies to Improve the Yield in Plasma Focused Ion Beam Circuit Editing

This contribution explores the potential of PFIB for the post-production circuit editing of custom ASICs. The reworking of integrated circuits with ion beam is an effective tool for testing design modifications rapidly, and in small-volume productions, it proves to be a valuable substitute for the microfabrication of chips with a revised layout, thus reducing the cost and lead time. In the case study in this work, the PFIB intervention resulted in the recovery of ~90% of defective channels in a multichannel ASIC design by disconnecting some parts of the internal circuit. This contribution describes several implemented optimization strategies and their statistical effectiveness.