Application of External Physical or Electrical Stimulations in Integrated Circuit Testing

New test methods, regarding functional testing or process controlling, are evaluated in this PhD thesis. The methods aim to improve the fault coverage, which is a measure for the test quality, by the application of external physical or electrical stimulations. Stimulations via LED are used to estimate the depletion junction depth, generated by an ion implantation process, or the width of an epitaxial grown layer. Latter can also be monitored under electrical stress conditions. Stimulations via LASER are used to localize temperature sensitive devices in an IC via heat diffusion.