Semiconductor Laboratory

Decapsulation

Decapsulation is the process of opening a packaged integrated circuit to see what is inside. Often the plastic encapsulation of integrate circuits is removed with strong acids. There is a commercial product called Dynasolve which is used for this purpose. There is a rosin method IC-Entkapselung_mit_Kolophonium that does not use such harsh acids. Another possibiity is to use an oxygen plasma. This is, however, a slow method.

An interesting website for decapsulation is https://www.richis-lab.de (in German). Below are some links to devices described on that website.

• Small-signal silicon bipolar transistors
• Silicon power bipolar transistors
• Silicon MOSFETs and JFETs

Below is a description of some decapsulation projects.

• Laser diode

• IC Decapsulation - Exposing Semiconductor Devices for Analysis From Insight Analytical Labs