New kinds of faults in digital ICs caused by particles with a certain resis
tance value are presented. By using an enhanced version of a three dimensio
nal contamination-defect-fault simulator the faulty circuit behaviour cause
d by these defects and appropriate test strategies have been investigated.
Moreover the dependence of failure probability on the defect size has been
simulated and used to obtain a reliability estimate of the analysed ICs. (C
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