EDFAS Online Community

This talk focuses on the physical inspection and assurance of electronics from the device to packaging and system level using advanced microscopy, failure analysis (FA) techniques combined with image analysis and machine learning. The most recent techniques for physical inspection and assurance are based on the tools and methodologies developed for FA in electronics. FA tools are primarily developed to detect a defect during or after fabrication process, but they have the most potential to be improved and help with detecting Trojans, extract secret keys, or reverse engineer a chip if used maliciously. Such tools include different imaging modalities such as optical microscope, scanning electron microscope (SEM), focused ion beam (FIB), photon emission microscope (PEM), X-ray microscopy (XRM), etc. and probe stations. It is worth mentioning that these methods require a very sophisticated sample preparation process to expose a targeted area for measurements. The attendees will learn briefly the working principle of such advanced microscopes and how they are used for physical inspection approaches including: reverse engineering, counterfeit detection, invasive and semi-invasive methods, etc.