System Development

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits

Nanofocus System Development

Waver

Today, state-of-the-art X-ray inspection systems solve a large variety of industrial tasks, such as:








  • fully automatic light alloy wheel inspection (acknowledged by BMW and Audi)
  • fully automatic solder joint inspection
  • Tomosynthesis of µ Ball Grid Arrays or flip chips
  • Industrial and scientific computed tomography
Up to now, these systems achieve a theoretical resolution capacity of a few µm. The progressing miniaturization in the fields of the semiconductor industry as well as of engineering mechanics, however, demands measuring systems with increasingly higher resolutions.

In cooperation with our partners in the fields of industry and science, our nanofocus system engineering group develops new methods in order to advance into the sub-µ dimension for the radioscopic measuring technology, aiming at the development of a CT system with a resolution of some 100 nm. This technology will permit radioscopic examinations of e.g. three-dimensional wiring structures directly on wafers (Vertical Integrated Circuits, VIC), for the first time.