History of the Electrical Characterization and Test Platform Development at Microelectronics and Nanotechnology Division of CDTA, Algeria

The sixties (60s) and seventies (70s) of the last century have seen the takeoff of microelectronics. Since that, several countries, including Algeria, have adopted planned strategic programs to develop their domestic electronics. In this paper, we provide a historical review of the evolution of the electrical test benches developed at the Division of Microelectronics and Nanotechnology (DMN) of the “Centre de Développement des Technologies Avancées” (CDTA) or Center for Development of the Advanced Technologies. Starting from mid- nineties to up today, the electrical characterization platform has known different generations of test benches; from a simple setup to extract current-voltage (I-V) and capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics of semiconductor devices to more sophisticated ones to extract spectra of electrically detected magnetic resonance (EDMR). In addition, some benches have been developed to study reliability issue in metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) devices and integrated circuits (ICs), such as ionizing radiation effects, Fowler-Nordheim (FN) stress, hot-carrier injection (HCI), time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB), and bias temperature instability (BTI). The obtained results have been published in well-known journals of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Institute of Physics (AIP), and the Elsevier publishers.