Innovative methodologies of circuit edit by focused ion beam (FIB) on wafer-level chip-scale-package (WLCSP) devices

As packaging technology advances to wafer level chip scale packaging (WLCSP) to enable reduced chip size and manufacturing cost, circuit edit has become a critical issue for the fully packaged integrated circuits (ICs). These advanced package types cannot be rebuilt on a single chip; therefore, function testing after circuit edit of WLCSP faces challenges. Furthermore, there are routings at the redistribution layer of WLCSP ICs. Circuit edit was applied on both the chip and the package level. In this paper the focused ion beam was applied to mill the organic material of the package structure to expose underlying ICs, instead of chemically destroying the packaging. Metal line cutting and conductive path deposition were also developed by a beam-based technique. These new approaches make the direct edit of electrical circuitry possible not only in ICs but also at package level. Therefore, for the debug process and for failure analysis, the WLCSP ICs have negligible damage and negligible signal integrity loss by retaining the original packaging structure.