Due to the continuous shrinkage of semiconductor devices, the use of a good 2D‐profiling technique is essential as these structures are entirely two‐dimensional and dopant nor carrier profiles are accessible with the standard 1D profiling techniques such as SRP and SIMS. In this work we present the application of SCM in support of the process development for a wide range of novel devices, such as trenchMOSFET, vertical RESURF diode, bipolar transistor. In all these applications, one of the most important issues to get good qualitative results is the sample preparation of the device. Therefore the sample preparation was optimized to get the best contrast in doping concentration at the same time avoiding the effects of contrast reversal. Also SCM at different dc‐bias in amplitude and phase mode is investigated in more detail. We systematically observe for both p‐ and n‐type a phase shift for high voltages as well as a large shift of the flatband voltage. With this knowledge reliable results are achieved for the different devices and especially measuring in phase mode offers more advantages in delineating p‐ and n‐type regions in comparison to SCM in amplitude mode. © 2003 American Institute of Physics