Reverse Engineering of VLSI Chips

Abstract

This work deals with reverse engineering, which is a set of methods for obtaining the design and fabrication details of an object from a working specimen. Reverse Engineering in Computer Hardware Design requires skills that few people can boast of having, those being solid state physics, atomic force and Raman microscopy, programming, cryptography, electronics, VLSI design (Very-large-scale integration design), Lambda Calculus, Functional Languages, Artificial Intelligence, etc. However, the present work is based on the premise that a person who is willing to learn a functional programming language and a few open source libraries will be able to ascertain useful information for the design and construction of a working microcontroller. Reverse engineering technics used to inspect a microchip can also be used for quality control. The following techniques are worth mentioning: Atomic Force Microscopy, Raman Spectroscopy, Photoluminescence Spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy coupled with Energy Dispersive X-ray detector (EDX). The author of the present work had access to all equipment and tools necessary for performing advanced microscopy and spectroscopy. To make a long story short, microscopy is used to survey the structure, component shapes and material used in the building of integrated circuits. Quantum dots are very small semiconductor particles, a few nanometers in size. They have a central role in nanotechnology, since they emit light in specific frequencies, when submitted to an electrical current. A quantum dot is a semiconductor nanostructure that confines the motion of conduction band electrons, valence band holes, or excitons in all three spatial directions. A quantum dot has a discrete quantized energy spectrum. That is the reason for the name. The author believes that the main original contributions of the present work is the measurements necessary to verify the control of CdTe quantum dot growth in a silicate glass matrix. In the experiment, the author and his collaborators have used Absortion Spectroscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy. In the same experiment, Photoluminescence Spectroscopy has shown that the cadmium vacancies diffused away from the quatum dots. In another experiment, the author used the same kind of tools, to wit, Atomic Force Microscopy and spectroscopy, in order to control densities of manganese ions and cadmium vacancies in Cd1-xMnxTe quantum dots that grew in a glass matrix. In this second experiment, manganese ions replaced cadmium. In consequence, the quantum dots have magnetic properties that arises from the spin of manganese ions. The author and his collaborators succeede is publishing the results of their experiments involving quantum dots in high impact periodicals in the field of Solid State Physics. The present review also propose methods for quality control of VLSI circuits. These methods use the same technology that the author introduced in the study of quantum dots: Atomic Force Microscopy, Raman Spectroscopy, Photoluminescence Spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy coupled with Energy Dispersive X-ray detector. Besides the original contributions, this document present an easy to follow review of Solid State Device Physics. The knowledge necessary for reading this work is very basic, and can be found in an introductory text like Arthur Beiser’s Concepts of Modern Physics.