Method and apparatus for selective burnout trimming of integrated circuit units
First Claim
1. A method of burning out a selected conductive connection of an integrated circuit unit having a metallic connection pattern, comprising the step of:
- applying a plurality of individual pulses of electrical energy in rapid succession to a selected portion of said metallic connection pattern constituting a selected conductive connection to be burned out, in such a way as to deliver to said selected connection amounts of energy per unit of time that increase with time until said connection is burned out.
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Abstract
Supplementary metallized connection parts short-circuiting or connecting incremental sub-components of one or more circuit elements of an integrated circuit are laid down on the semiconductor slice at the same time as the usual metallized connection pattern is made. The components associated with the incremental sub-components are measured to determine the program of adjustment and selective burnout of the supplementary connections. The selective burnout is carried out by applying a sequence of pulses to the segments to be burned out under monitoring by a measuring circuit, which blocks the delivery of further pulses, either immediately or after one or a few more pulses, when the measuring circuit detects the opening of the connection. The process is preferably carried out on integrated circuits before the semiconductor slice on which they are made is separated into individual circuit units. The pulses are applied in sequences in which individual pulses or series of pulses have increasing amplitude and/or pulse duration and/or pulse frequency.
69 Citations
14 Claims
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1. A method of burning out a selected conductive connection of an integrated circuit unit having a metallic connection pattern, comprising the step of:
applying a plurality of individual pulses of electrical energy in rapid succession to a selected portion of said metallic connection pattern constituting a selected conductive connection to be burned out, in such a way as to deliver to said selected connection amounts of energy per unit of time that increase with time until said connection is burned out. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A method of providing an electrical resistance of a magnitude within a predetermined resistance range in an integrated circuit unit, comprising the steps of:
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providing in said integrated circuit a plurality of parallel resistance paths connected together by metallic connection paths which are part of the metallic connection path pattern of the integrated circuit unit; burning out a portion of one of said metallic connection paths so as to disconnect at least one of said parallel resistances by applying to said metallic path portion a plurality of individual pulses of electrical energy in rapid succession in such a way as to deliver increasing amounts of energy per units of time until said path is interrupted by burn-out; measuring the effective resistance of said remaining parallel resistance paths after disconnection as aforesaid, and repeating the burnout disconnecting step and the measuring step until the effective resistance of the remaining parallel resistance paths is within said predetermined range. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14)
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Specification