JEDEC JEP159

This document is intended for use in the semiconductor IC manufacturing industry and provides reliability characterization techniques for low-k inter/intra level dielectrics (ILD) for the evaluation and control of ILD processes. It describes procedures developed for estimating the general integrity of back-end-of-line (BEOL) ILD. Two basic test procedures are described, the Voltage-Ramp Dielectric Breakdown (VRDB) test, and the Constant Voltage Time-Dependent Dielectric Breakdown stress (CVS). Each test is designed for different reliability and process evaluation purposes. This document also describes robust techniques to detect breakdown and TDDB data analysis.