edfas.org ELECTRONIC DEVICE FAILURE ANALYSIS | VOLUME 25 NO. 4 2 For many years, I’ve attended ISTFA and other microelectronics meetings and there is always talk of how we have new challenges that we’ve never encountered before, and the existing infrastructure of capabilities and expertise will not meet the current and upcoming needs. Some of the presentations address the challenges and other gaps are left to future events. With each device technology advancement, failure analysis (FA) “turns another chapter,” again. So, what else is new? FA has and will pretty much always reinvent itself to serve the needs of the microelectronics community. Much of the current microsystems’ trend toward heterogeneous integration to achieve “more than Moore” performance leads the changing FA needs. Silicon ICs, photonic devices, radio frequency (RF) chiplets, and all the interconnections between them can be daunting, previously unknown problems for FA. But we’ve been here before with FA reinventing itself via clever new techniques on existing tools, new tools to employ that haven’t been seen or used before, and new combinations of tools and innovative applications to get to defect localization and root cause corrective action. At the 1994 International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS), Intel’s Craig Barrett suggested that in a decade reliability engineers and failure analysts would essentially be quantum mechanics (people, not the field of physics) due to the future nature of the microelectronics industry. While part of this was to make for an interesting and provocative keynote address and he may have been a little early, it is hard to argue that quantum and “modern” physics isn’t part of the state-of-the-art (SOTA) devices we produce and the tools we use to examine them. Even the concept of a scanning electron microscope being resolution limited by the electron wavelength seemed totally foreign 5-10 years ago, but now it is in the conversation. I have enough fingers to count the atoms across a SOTA transistor channel and before too long I may only need one hand. Yes, things are changing. As before, we don’t “throw in the towel,” we get proactive in responding to the challenges. The EDFAS FA Technology Roadmap and IEEE Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap are examples of leaning into what will be coming and how to address it. Identifying the gaps is a first step to solving problems. And the FA engineer is and has not been alone. Manufacturers are interested in having reliable, high-performing products for consumers and tool providers, and interested in supplying the infrastructure to meet those needs. In addition to localization capabilities, we should not forget what the “T” in ISTFA stands for. Testing will continue to be an integral part of the FA process NOVEMBER 2023 | VOLUME 25 | ISSUE 4 A RESOURCE FOR TECHNICAL INFORMATION AND INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENTS ELECTRONIC DEVICE FAILURE ANALYSIS GUEST EDITORIAL FAILURE ANALYSIS TURNS ANOTHER CHAPTER, AGAIN Edward I. Cole, Jr., Sandia National Laboratories coleei@sandia.gov edfas.org Cole (continued on page 44) PURPOSE: To provide a technical condensation of information of interest to electronic device failure analysis technicians, engineers, and managers. Nicholas Antoniou Editor/PrimeNano nicholas@primenanoinc.com Mary Anne Fleming Director, Journals, Magazines & Digital Media Joanne Miller Senior Editor Victoria Burt Managing Editor Allison Freeman Production Supervisor ASSOCIATE EDITORS Navid Asadi University of Florida Guillaume Bascoul CNES France Felix Beaudoin GlobalFoundries Michael R. Bruce Consultant David L. Burgess Accelerated Analysis Jiann Min Chin Advanced Micro Devices Singapore Edward I. Cole, Jr. Sandia National Labs Michael DiBattista Varioscale Inc. Rosine Coq Germanicus Universitié de Caen Normandie Szu Huat Goh Qualcomm Ted Kolasa Northrop Grumman Space Systems Rosalinda M. Ring Thermo Fisher Scientific Tom Schamp Materials Analytical Services LLC David Su Yi-Xiang Investment Co. Martin Versen University of Applied Sciences Rosenheim, Germany FOUNDING EDITORS Edward I. Cole, Jr. Sandia National Labs Lawrence C. Wagner LWSN Consulting Inc. GRAPHIC DESIGN Jan Nejedlik, jan@designbyj.com PRESS RELEASE SUBMISSIONS magazines@asminternational.org Electronic Device Failure Analysis™ (ISSN 1537-0755) is published quarterly by ASM International®, 9639 Kinsman Road, Materials Park, OH 44073; tel: 800.336.5152; website: edfas. org. Copyright © 2023 by ASM International. Receive Electronic Device Failure Analysis as part of your EDFAS membership. Non-member subscription rate is $175 U.S. per year. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by ASM International for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) Transactional Reporting Service, provided that the base fee of $19 per article is paid directly to CCC, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Electronic Device Failure Analysis is indexed or abstracted by Compendex, EBSCO, Gale, and ProQuest.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTMyMzg5NA==