Abstract
As power densification demands are placing electronic packages under greater reliability risk, the consequence of complementary or interacting stresses in producing failure are becoming increasingly significant. As such, it is important that reliability methods and package designs consider how multiple-stress interactions may impact product life. Here, the coordination between a novel accelerated testing method and electronic design automation efforts has demonstrated a successful optimization approach for a wire-bonded 2D module layout combining failure mechanisms of electromigration and mechanical stressing. Utilizing custom, physics-of-failure approaches in accelerated testing, interactions can be observed in failure acceleration, which then can be incorporated into design for reliability (DfR) optimization tools. The PowerSynth 2 platform has been utilized as a design for reliability tool to perform a rapid reliability evaluation incorporating multi-stress scenarios. This work demonstrates the value added to reliability evaluation techniques when accounting for interacting failure mechanisms and suggests that next generation power devices consider these effects in lifetime estimation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 12-17 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Advancing Microelectronics |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| State | Published - 2024 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
The authors would like to thank the Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation, and University of Arkansas for funding and facility access for the completion of this work. This material is based upon work supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) under Contract No. FA9550-21-1-0205 and the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. 2014-00555-04. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research or National Science Foundation. Designing next-generation power electronics will require the development of multi-mechanism failure analysis datasets which more accurately predict lifetimes compared to single failure mechanisms used today. This work demonstrates a design for reliability methodology which, with appropriate data and integration into an EDA space, can be applied to many different application spaces. As multi-stress scenarios become better understood, reliability estimates for new devices will follow suit. From this effort, it has been shown that incorporation of multi-stress experimental results on wire-bonded interconnects into an EDA environment can assist in the optimization of a designed layout. This effort complements the EM-aware optimization flow with solder bump interconnects demonstrated in [21]. In this work, the effective coordination between accelerated testing and EDA efforts has demonstrated a successful optimization approach for a wire-bonded 2D module layout combining failure mechanisms of EM and mechanical loading. The PowerSynth 2 platform has been put forward as a DfR tool for performing a rapid relative reliability study which can be adapted to incorporate multi-stress sce- narios. It can optimize device location and trace routing, considering the reliability metrics desired by the user of the tool. The stress estimation method used in this study is preliminary and experimental and needs improvement for achieving higher accuracy. Further development of statistically-derived reliability models based on experimental efforts will also prove to be useful on this front, as they have the potential to surpass the simplicity of raw data sets in terms of rapid lifetime assessment and optimization. Acknowledgment The authors would like to thank the Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation, and University of Arkansas for funding and facility access for the completion of this work. This material is based upon work supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) under Contract No. FA9550-21-1-0205 and the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. 2014-00555-04. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research or National Science Foundation.
Keywords
- accelerated testing
- design automation
- design for reliability
- interacting failure mechanisms
- layout optimization
- power electronics