ESD on Wafers to IC

Guest

I do know that ESD occurs when fabricating wafers. How would I differentiate if indeed an ESD damage occurs in IC and it happened during fabrication, not after it's built, or let us say its a latent failure and it started at fabrication?

Thank you.

Joined: 20 Jun 2026 Posts: 76

I don't think there's a sure-fire way to distinguish ESD damage that occurs at fab and one that occurs somewhere else, based on attributes alone. You'll always need to do process investigations, monitors, sampling, experiments, and simulations, to be able to identify the actual source of a certain esd damage. And even if you do all of these you are not assured that you'll nail down the culprit.

Joined: 08 Jun 2026 Posts: 18 Location: CV

that's why ESD protection circuits are needed. some companies even have design engineers for ESD circuits alone. . . .

ESD program is important but somehow most manufacturers "ignore" or don't give emphasis to this, even as device geometries become smaller and smaller and circuits become more complex and compact.