MICROELECTRONIC INTEGRATED CIRCUIT ACCELERATED LIFE TESTS.

The advent of the integrated circuit as a design vehicle in the more sophisticated systems had led to many assumptions concerning their physical cause of failure. The methods of stressing monolithic integrated circuits reliability degradation models as developed from stressing 2000 circuits is the subject of this report. Among the many stressing techniques used in this program was the long-term operating life testing at several temperatures and biases. Other techniques, such as long-term storage life testing, mechanical shock, centrifuge, thermal shock, and step stressing, supplemented the basic testing technique. While this program resulted in an increased knowledge of the reliability of the integrated circuit, its most important contribution to reliability was in its evaluation of three types of basic operating life test models, its verification that previous discrete silicon transistor failure modes are still applicable, and that the more extensive use of thin metallized interconnection strips has required more sophisticated process controls. The evaluation of various mathematical models for defining device reliability at use conditions was not pursued extensively. The testing emphasis explored the physical cause of failure and the problem of accelerated stresses to some assumed use condition. This report was written in a manner such that the subjects are explored as generally as possible. Each item or major segment of this report can and should be the subject of a singular intensive reliability investigation. Author