Testing is critical in all phases of manufacturing and development. This is an old conceptand has never been denied. It is needed to understand the health of the process and product and preventing any bugs reaching the end customer. Integrated circuits multiply the complexity of this task by many magnitudes. Dealing with billions of transistors on a chip, it is easy for one extremely tiny defect to destroy everything. Also, reaching those circuits physically and the geometries of manufacturer (in some cases distances could be measured in number of atoms) is challenging. One area this is necessary for is component debug. Once engineering samples are created, they must be rigorously tested for bugs and slow speed paths. To help in this endeavor several tools are taken advantage of. Expensive testers are used with prototype systems and boards at first manufacture.These help identify issues for the component debuggers. To confirm design fixes, optical probing tools can be used to find marginalities in the targeted devices. Then by using a focused ion beamtool (FIB) on the individual units, the circuitry can be altered, verifying that design fix. Speed of debug means revenue on a product can be made faster as the product can be released sooner. Along these lines, units need sample prep before probe or circuit edit. Silicon must be removed from the backside of the die so the probe can interact with the circuitry. In the case of circuit edit, it must be completely removed in a specific region of interest. Testers are used to confirm the units are still functional after the very invasive sample prep process. Currently, the very expensive testers are used. This prevents other material from being debugged on that machine. Post sample prep testing is important because it would be a waste of valuable tool time if parts are not verified to be working. In most cases, all post sample prep testing needs is continuity testing, and not any fully functional test. If a less complex and less expensive tester can be made for this purpose, it can help speed up the component debug process, and get product to market faster. This project fills that need with an inexpensive alternative tester. It uses protection diodes to test for circuit integrity, all while being manufactured for less that two thousand dollars.
