Testing and diagnostics of CMOS circuits using light emission from off-state leakage current

In recent years, innovative applications based on the detection of emission sources such as the light emission from off-state leakage current (LEOSLC) of CMOS transistors have been developed for testing and diagnosing modern ultralarge-scale integration circuits. In this paper, we show that LEOSLC can be used to effectively debug circuits, localize defects with a quick turn around time, read the logic state of gates, and extract the internal voltage drop of power distribution grids among others. © 2004 IEEE.