2001 Photo Contest Winners

Congratulations to the 2001 winners!
 Category I: Color Images
1st Place:

Jianxiong Chen

Nokia Corporation, Finland

The photo is not of a pine tree on a winter’s night. It is a silver dendrite growth found in a hybrid in telecom equipment that was used in the field for just 3-5 months. The photo was taken using optical microscopy with 500x magnification.

2nd Place:


Mark Kearns

Zenith Electronics Corporation, Illinois

Subtle ESD damage to IC protection structure, as
detected by liquid crystal analysis. The failure site is
the dark circular spot to the lower left of the ball
bond, at the corner of the bond pad.

3rd Place: 

Walter M. Smith

L-3 Communication Systems, New Jersey

Plastic package bulging at the seams !
This was caused by absorbed moisture which vaporized during the heat of convection reflow soldering.

 Category II: Black and White Images
1st Place:

James Riddle

Oceanside, California

Intermittent triggering of magnetic field intrusion detector determined to be caused by conductive paths across insulators. SEM revealed salt accumulation in the insulators and bridging across insulator by spider webs. This is a photograph of a sodium chloride crystal grown on a single spider web filament.

2nd Place: 

Erkko Elonen

Nokia Mobile Phones, Finland

Lead migration in SnPb pattern. A bias voltage was
applied between two solder patterns in order
to study surface insulation resistance during
moisture testing.

3rd Place:

Bernhard Knoll

Infineon Technologies AG, Germany

‘Silicon Canyon’ – The SEM image shows erosion on micron scale. The structures were formed during focused ion beam preparation of a lamella (not shown) for transmission electron microscopy. Dirt from the previous polishing step served as a mask thus preventing FIB etching in an artistic manner.
 Category III: False Color Images
1st Place:

Dave Vallett

St. Essex Junction, Vermont

Backside current density image of an SRAM device obtained with a scanning SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device) microscope. A Fourier image transform converts the mapped magnetic fields into current density. A surface plot is then created using commercial image processing software.

2nd Place:

Kartik Ramanujachar

Texas Instruments Incorporated, Texas

Scanning capacitance image (SCM) of
substrate level defect seen in a capacitor
structure.The defect is enclosed within
the blue box. Wafer was processed to the
level of gate oxide.
3rd Place:

Bernd Ebersberger

Infineon Technologies, Germany

Atomic Force Microscopy image of a tungsten via-plug embedded in intermetal oxide after tungsten-CMP and subsequent oxide-CMP. AFM measures the flatness of the surface: the step height between the different materials, surface roughness and how deeply the tungsten is dished out in the plug and the surrounding oxide.