Onto Innovation Inc. announced the release of a new sub-surface inspection capability for the Dragonfly G3 sub-micron 2D/3D inspection and metrology platform. The new capability enables whole wafer inspection for critical yield impacting defects that can lead to lost die as well as entire wafers breaking in subsequent process steps. Such defects were previously impossible to find in a production environment.

In today?s world of wafer thinning and multi-layer wafer or die bonding, sub-surface defects are far more dangerous than ever before as bonded layers are now a tenth of their former thickness and far more brittle and therefore more susceptible to damage pre- or post-bonding. Sub-surface defects that occur during the bonding or thinning process such as micro-cracks can cause not only die yield issues, but wafers can be shattered resulting in the loss of hundreds of die in an instant. Now, Onto Innovation is offering the capability to detect these yield killing defects on the well-established Dragonfly platform at production speeds.

By using novel infra-red (IR) technology and specially designed algorithms, the Dragonfly platform provides customers a choice to scan the entire wafer for hidden defects rather than be limited to sampling only selected areas of the wafer. This greatly impacts final yield and cost savings through reduced scrapped wafer/die stacks.