Combined shear force - tunneling microscope as a nanometer resolution diagnostic tool for thin oxide films.

Very fast development of VLSI integrated circuits (Very Large Scale of Integration) lately even called ULSI (Ultra-Large Scale Integration) requires single structures downsizing. Thereby channel length of MOS (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) transistors as well as source and drain plugs sizes are reduced. Also, the thickness of oxide layer in the gate area decreases as well. In order to perform test of dielectric layer with nanometer resolution in lateral plane, one can use AFM with conductive tip, where after biasing the sample, current flow to the tip allows to estimate the electrical properties of the surface. In the article we will present modular Shear-force/ Tunneling Microscope. The metallic scanning microtip is used as a nano e-beam and it allows to measure the local surface emission and investigate the quality of dielectric layer in semiconductor chip.