Liquid Crystal Analysis is a failure analysis technique used to localize areas on the die surface that exhibit excessive heating. It is a simple technique for hot spot detection with good sensitivity and spatial resolution which detects tens of microwatts power dissipation (mA leakage). Excessive heating indicates a high current flow, which may be due to die defects or abnormalities like ESD/EOS damage, dielectric ruptures, metallization shorts, leaky junctions and latch-up locations.