Infrared Thermal Imaging Detection and Image Segmentation of Micro-Crack Defects in Semiconductor Silicon Wafer Scanned by Laser

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Abstract

Mono-crystalline silicon wafers play a key role in photovoltaic technology and microelectronics manufacturing due to their good semiconductor characteristics. In order to meet the demand of high-tech industries, the production technology of silicon wafer is supposed to meet the high-precision standard, and if the micro-cracks produced during grinding are not detected on time, the yield of a useful product will be reduced. In order to achieve more efficient detection of micro-cracks in silicon wafers, a scanning laser thermal nondestructive testing system was developed. Using the pseudo static matrix reconstruction algorithm, the experimental data has been converted into static images to provide easier defect detection and evaluation. The influence of geometric characteristics (length, width and depth) of micro-cracks and laser excitation power on surface temperature signals in the laser scanning tests has been studied. The image enhancement techniques, such as linear gray scale transformation, basic function transformation and histogram equalization have been compared. The effectiveness of using super-pixel segmentation, dual threshold segmentation, iterative threshold segmentation and UNet3+ network for improving micro-crack detection efficiency has been explored. Common segmentation techniques have not proven to be useful in the image enhancement because of the presence of noise. Better results in image segmentation have been achieved by using a UNet3+ network, which ensured identification accuracy of about 90 % in the segmentation of micro-crack defects.

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About the authors

Qingju Tang

Heilongjiang University of Science and Technology

Author for correspondence.
Email: tangqingju@126.com
China, 1, Puyuan Road, Songbei District, Harbin, 150022

Bo Fang

Heilongjiang University of Science and Technology

Email: tangqingju@126.com
China, 1, Puyuan Road, Songbei District, Harbin, 150022

Zhuoyan Gu

Heilongjiang University of Science and Technology

Email: tangqingju@126.com
China, 1, Puyuan Road, Songbei District, Harbin, 150022

V. P. Vavilov

Tomsk Polytechnic University

Email: tangqingju@126.com
Russian Federation, 30, Lenin Ave., Tomsk, 634050

A. O. Chulkov

Tomsk Polytechnic University

Email: tangqingju@126.com
Russian Federation, 30, Lenin Ave., Tomsk, 634050

Guipeng Xu

Heilongjiang University of Science and Technology

Email: tangqingju@126.com
China, 1, Puyuan Road, Songbei District, Harbin, 150022

Zhibo Wang

Heilongjiang University of Science and Technology

Email: tangqingju@126.com
China, 1, Puyuan Road, Songbei District, Harbin, 150022

Hongru Bu

Heilongjiang University of Science and Technology

Email: tangqingju@126.com
China, 1, Puyuan Road, Songbei District, Harbin, 150022

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Supplementary files

Supplementary Files
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1. JATS XML
2. Fig. 1. Scheme of thermal inspection with laser scanning.

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3. Fig. 2. Experimental setup of thermal control with laser scanning.

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4. Fig. 3. Experimental samples.

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5. Fig. 4. Temperature change in time (thermogram number corresponds to a certain moment of time) in the central point of the field of view when moving the sample.

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6. Fig. 5. Pseudostatic thermograms and temperature profiles for defects with varying width (a), length (b) and depth (c).

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7. Fig. 6. Towards the selection of defect and defect-free regions.

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8. Fig. 7. Signal-to-noise ratio SNR as a function of crack width (a), length (b) and depth (c).

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9. Fig. 8. Thermograms of cracks in the sample at increasing laser heating power (from right to left).

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10. Fig. 9. Temperature profiles at different laser powers.

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11. Fig. 10. Result of applying linear grey level transformation.

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12. Fig. 11. The result of applying basic transformation functions.

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13. Fig. 12. The result of histogram levelling.

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14. Fig. 13. Towards the selection of regions for calculating temperature contrasts.

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15. Fig. 14. Comparison of thermogram processing algorithms by contrast criterion.

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16. Fig. 15. The result of superpixel segmentation.

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17. Fig. 16. Result of applying morphological dilatation (segmentation with double thresholding).

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18. Fig. 17. The result of applying iterative segmentation by thresholding.

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19. Fig. 18. Scheme of the UNet3+ neural network.

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20. Fig. 19. Diagram of the structure of full-scale links in the UNet3+ neural network.

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21. Fig. 20. Image processing stages and corresponding labels (UNet3+ neural network).

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22. Fig. 21. A model of the learning process.

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23. Fig. 22. Segmentation result using the UNet3+ network.

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