LICKENBROCK TECHNOLOGIES, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: DMEA152-002

Description

There exists currently a need to non-destructively evaluate the construction of integrated circuits (ICs) that will ensure the trust of ICs used inmilitary systems, but designed and fabricated under untrusted conditions. An X-ray microscope (XRM) equipped with a lab X-ray source will beused to fill this need. The drawbacks to this system are prohibitively long acquisition times due to reduced X-ray flux and the relatively largeimaging area. This project will develop the acquisition scheme and software to enable faster time to data, while maintaining accurate imagereconstructions. We aim to minimize this time through optimal projection angle selection, the use of a data adaptive scanning scheme, and alsoby reducing the number of projections necessary by leveraging knowledge of the geometry and composition of ICs. An iterative imagereconstruction algorithm will be implemented that is well suited for use with a limited number of projection angles. Algorithms will be developed insoftware to analyze the data from the XRM in order to identify and map the conductors in ICs. The final result of the work will be a feasibility reportspecifying assumptions and requirements of the hardware and software system to produce a prototype of the concepts.