Short Description
Silicon is the foundation of modern microelectronics, photonics, MEMS, and advanced semiconductor research. It is the primary material used to fabricate integrated circuits, silicon photonic devices, sensors, power electronics, and many emerging technologies.
Unlike visible light, infrared illumination transmits efficiently through silicon, enabling non-destructive visualization of buried structures without thinning, cleaving, or opening the device. This allows engineers and researchers to quickly inspect internal features and focus on multiple depths within the substrate during development, process optimization, and failure analysis.
What Our System Can Do for This Material
- Inspect bonded, stacked, or bulk silicon wafers without separating layers
- Verify internal alignment features before dicing or packaging
- Examine buried structures across multiple depths during process development
- Evaluate internal interfaces without destructive sample preparation
- Inspect photonic circuits, MEMS devices, TSVs, and buried interconnects in real time
- Move seamlessly between wafer-level validation and die-level debugging
Typical Use Cases
- Confirming layer-to-layer alignment after wafer bonding
- Inspecting TSVs, buried vias, and embedded interconnect structures
- Verifying bonding integrity before committing to downstream processing
- Inspecting buried photonic waveguides and alignment marks
- Locating internal features when debugging early prototypes
- Investigating yield drops when surface inspection reveals no visible defects
Compatible Jay Photonics Systems
Related Application Notes
Silicon Verniers: Sharper Visualization Using Optimized Infrared Microscopy
Imaging Through Metal-Coated Silicon
Imaging Photonic Grating Couplers Through Silicon
Full-Wafer Infrared Inspection For Detecting Bonding Voids In Silicon Wafers
Learn More About Silicon
Why Silicon?
Silicon dominates semiconductor manufacturing because it combines outstanding material properties with a highly mature manufacturing ecosystem. As a group-IV semiconductor, silicon can have its electrical properties precisely tuned through doping, while single-crystal silicon is mechanically robust enough to withstand demanding fabrication and packaging processes [1]. Decades of large-scale manufacturing have also created a reliable, cost-effective supply chain, making silicon the benchmark against which newer semiconductor materials, such as silicon carbide (SiC), are often compared [2].
This mature ecosystem now supports a wide range of technologies, including CMOS electronics, MEMS, silicon photonics, and advanced heterogeneous integration [3]. Another unique advantage of silicon is its transparency to near-infrared light, which allows engineers to inspect buried structures through the substrate without cutting or grinding the device. Using infrared microscopy, internal features such as photonic waveguides, alignment marks, and other submicron structures can be visualized non-destructively during development, process optimization, and failure analysis.
Common Devices Built with Silicon
Silicon is the foundation of most modern semiconductor technologies. It is used to fabricate CMOS integrated circuits, microprocessors, silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs), CMOS image sensors, MEMS sensors and actuators, power semiconductor devices, and radio-frequency (RF) integrated circuits [4,5].
More recently, silicon has also become the preferred platform for advanced packaging technologies, including 3D integration with through-silicon vias (TSVs), enabling higher device density, improved performance, and heterogeneous integration [6].
Industrial Applications and Challenges
As semiconductor devices become increasingly complex, manufacturers rely on wafer bonding, heterogeneous integration, chip stacking, and advanced packaging to improve performance and functionality.
These manufacturing approaches introduce new inspection challenges because many critical features become buried beneath the silicon surface. Conventional characterization techniques such as cross-sectioning, polishing, or destructive failure analysis are often required to access internal structures, increasing development time and cost while preventing further testing of the same sample [7].
Rapid, non-destructive inspection methods are therefore becoming increasingly important throughout device development, process optimization, and manufacturing.
Why Infrared Inspection Matters
Silicon is highly transparent to infrared wavelengths, allowing infrared microscopy to image structures that are hidden beneath the surface. This enables engineers to inspect buried alignment marks, photonic waveguides, MEMS structures, bonding interfaces, TSVs, and internal defects without modifying the sample.
Whether validating wafer bonding, troubleshooting fabrication processes, or analyzing prototype devices, infrared inspection provides a fast, non-destructive method for visualizing internal features while preserving the device for additional testing and processing.
References
[1] Tilli, Markku, Mervi Paulasto-Kröckel, Matthias Petzold, Horst Theuss, Teruaki Motooka, and Veikko Lindroos, eds. Handbook of silicon based MEMS materials and technologies. Elsevier, 2020.
[2] Prakash, A. (2024). Comparative Study of Silicon and Silicon Carbide Semiconductors. Journal of Research in Science and Engineering, 6(11), 1–5.
[3] Quack, Niels, Alain Yuji Takabayashi, Hamed Sattari, Pierre Edinger, Gaehun Jo, Simon J. Bleiker, Carlos Errando-Herranz et al. "Integrated silicon photonic MEMS." Microsystems & Nanoengineering 9, no. 1 (2023): 27.
[4] A. El Gamal and H. Eltoukhy, "CMOS image sensors," in IEEE Circuits and Devices Magazine, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 6-20, May-June 2005.
[5] Algamili, Abdullah Saleh, Mohd Haris Md Khir, John Ojur Dennis, Abdelaziz Yousif Ahmed, Sami Sultan Alabsi, Saeed Salem Ba Hashwan, and Mohammed M. Junaid. "A review of actuation and sensing mechanisms in MEMS-based sensor devices." Nanoscale research letters 16, no. 1 (2021): 16.
[6] Shen, Wen-Wei, and Kuan-Neng Chen. "Three-dimensional integrated circuit (3D IC) key technology: Through-silicon via (TSV)." Nanoscale research letters 12, no. 1 (2017): 56.
[7] Halder, Sandip, Karen Stiers, Andy Miller, Ingrid De Wolf, Alain Phommahaxay, Mireille Maenhoudt, Eric Beyne, and Stefano Guerrieri. "Metrology and inspection challenges for manufacturing 3D stacked IC's." In ASMC 2013 SEMI Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference, pp. 75-79. IEEE, 2013.