A low-cost concurrent TSV test architecture with lossless test output compression scheme

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 14; no. 8; p. e0221043
• Main Authors: Lee, Young-Woo, Lim, Hyunchan, Seo, Sungyoul, Cho, Keewon, Kang, Sungho
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 23-08-2019; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Algorithms; Architectural engineering; Architecture; Bonds (Securities); Bridges; Capacitance; Circuit design; Compression; Compression tests; Defects; Electric bridges; Electronics - methods; Engineering; Engineering and Technology; Equipment Design; Fabrication; Hardware; Integrated circuits; International conferences; Manufacturing; Mass production; Medical research; Physical Sciences; Power consumption; Reliability; Semiconductors; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Silicon; Silicon - chemistry; Testing equipment; Thermal stress
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0221043

As the traditional IC design migrates to three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D-ICs) design, new challenges need to be considered carefully to solve its reliability and yield issues. 3D-ICs using through-silicon-vias (TSVs) can have latent defects such as resistive open and bridge defects, which are caused by the thermal stress during the fabrication process. These latent defects lead to the deterioration of the electrical performance of TSVs caused by an undesired increase in the resistance-capacitance (RC) delay. For this reason, various post-bond test methodologies have been studied to improve the reliability of 3D-ICs. Cost reduction in these TSV test architectures is also currently being studied by decreasing various factors such as hardware overhead, test time, and the peak current consumption. Usually, a single test-clock-period is required to determine whether the test result contains the defective TSV. When the test result of any TSVs fails, we use another single test-clock-period to classify its defect type. In this paper, we propose a new TSV test architecture to transfer the combined test output of the test result and the specific defect type to the pad during the single test-clock-period. Our proposed test architecture also provides a reliable block-based concurrent testing to optimize the test time by dividing the die into concurrent blocks. The experimental results showed that our proposed test architecture could reduce the test time and the hardware overhead substantially by ensuring that the reasonable peak power consumption for mass production was reasonable without the test quality being adversely affected.