Heart of the Matter: Scanning scope digs deeper into microchips
Princesses may feel peas under huge stacks of mattresses, but semiconductor manufacturers have a much harder time detecting minuscule defects within the crystalline layers of their microchips. So, they have difficulty determining when something goes wrong in the manufacturing process. Now, researchers have developed a noninvasive imaging technique that lets them see deep inside a chip.
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2005/10/5329.jpg?resize=300%2C138&ssl=1)
Scanning-probe microscopy, a family of techniques that can portray surfaces in exquisite detail, is routinely used for analyzing chip materials. But defects that are buried more than 5 to 10 nanometers below the surface are “pretty much impossible to see,” says Vinayak P. Dravid, a materials scientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.