National Institute of Standards and Technology researchers have come up with a technique that can simultaneously identify individual defects in microcircuits on the same chip.

The method, dubbed remote bias-induced electrostatic force microscopy, involves the application of specific alternating current voltages to neighboring wires instead of to the atomic force microscope’s tip, NIST said Thursday.

According to NIST, an AFM comes with an ultrasharp tip connected to a cantilever that “vibrates like a diving board.” Under the existing method, AC voltage is applied to the AFM tip as it screens across wires buried beneath the surface of a chip and a flaw in a wire will emerge marked by the change in the tip’s vibration.

With the new technique, researchers applied out-of-phase AC voltages to neighboring wires and were able to detect the flaws and produce clear images of defects in wires.

The technique was developed by NIST scientists Joseph Kopanski, Evgheni Strelcov and Lin You.

“Applying a voltage to the wires instead of the AFM tip may seem like a small innovation, but it makes a big difference,” said Kopanski.

“The method does not require a new instrument and could be easily implemented by the semiconductor industry,” he added.

Lindsay Steel, chief of Freedom of Information Act compliance staff at the Department of Justice’s office of information policy, said DOJ and the National Archives and Records Administration are working with the General Services Administration to come up with shared business standards for FOIA to ensure compliance with FOIA’s processing requests and procedural requirements, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

“It would also facilitate easier compliance with reporting obligations, along with improved data quality. It can also help agencies keep up with increasing requests and reducing backlogs, overall, facilitating better customer service for the public,” Steel said of those shared FOIA standards.

She said those tech standards could serve as an assessment tool and could aid agencies in their procurement of FOIA platforms. She noted that case management systems will be the initial focus area for the shared standards.

“We think this is a type of technology that is the most wide-ranging in terms of different agencies needing some type of case management tool,” Steel said. 

“This focus will allow us to define data requirements that support FOIA compliance and reporting, as well as defining workflows and perhaps some other functionality and baked-in logic that can help facilitate efficiency,” she added.