Characterization and Testing of Integrated Circuits Laboratory

The characterization, testing and modeling of semiconductor devices and integrated circuits (IC’s) have become so complex and time consuming that normally represent a bottleneck regarding the speed in sending an electronic product to the market.

The main activities conducted in this laboratory regards on the electrical measurement of the performance of fabricated devices and ICs at both, the wafer level and after packaging. To achieve this goal, this laboratory is equipped with the facilities necessary for measuring those variables that determine the operating frequency, power consumption, noise, fault tolerance, effects of variations in the IC’s performance due to the variability of both, process parameters and environmental conditions such as temperature, noise, radiation, etc.

Based on the results obtained from these measurements, it is possible to feedback the design stage in order to achieve the desired performance for the final IC.

Some specific activities of this laboratory include:

• Characterization of analog, digital and mixed-mode IC’s, from DC up to a relatively high frequency (20 GHz).
• Measurements on MOS devices and IC’s at different temperatures.
• Characterization of silicon-based transducers.
• Characterization and fault diagnosis of IC’s.
• Study of the effects of the variability of process parameters on the fabricated IC’s.

Leading Researcher: Ph.D. Mónico Linares Aranda
Technical staff: Guillermo Luna y Aguilar.