Introduction to semiconductor quality and reliability—Part I

Semiconductor Quality and Reliability--Page 3.

Early failures are mainly caused by problems in the manufacturing process, and this type of failure will be gradually reduced as time elapses. To ensure a stable supply of good products to market, thorough quality control and process control are needed. In addition, early failures should be thoroughly eliminated by debugging, such as by burn-in or aging so that a company will only deliver products that will not cause any early failures.

It can be said that random failures can lower the reliability of a product. The reliability depends on the design quality. For example, if environmental stresses can be reduced, the random failure rate can be reduced. Regarding semiconductor devices, the properties are stabilized during this period. Regarding wear-out failures, the failure rate will increase as the product wears out or becomes fatigued. For semiconductor devices, the occurrence of wear-out failures depends on the device type. Generally, however, if a wear-out failure occurs, recurrence preventive measures, such as 100% replacement, can be taken. This type of measure, however, may cause early failures. So such measures should be taken carefully.

Note: Failure mechanisms and Failure Analysis will be discussed in the next part of this series.

 

About the Authors

Abhishek Gupta is a business analyst for Cypress Semiconductor.  He has a B.E. in Electronics & Communications from Maharishi Dayanand University, Haryana, India.  He has worked with Agilent Technologies as a Logistics Coordinator (RoHS Specialist) and can be reached at agni@cypress.com.

Ashish Kumar is presently working with Cypress Semiconductor India Pvt. Ltd. as a Senior Product Engineer. His interests are in making hobby electronic projects, debugging circuit boards, and dealing with complex analog and digital circuits.