The EDFAS Education Subcommittee strives for the development and delivery of educational products to the EDFAS membership. Keeping with its strategic focus on reaching a broader audience, including facilitating Q&A and educational exchanges on the ASM Connect platform, the Subcommittee presents short format presentations on selected FA topics. These presentations are available on ASM Connect and highlighted in EDFA Magazine.
We present the tutorial:
Failure Analysis of Advanced Microelectronics
By Dan Sullivan
The world of Failure Analysis is vast. The goal of this video is to encourage newcomers, expand the knowledge of journeymen, and share some familiar and humorous examples with seasoned professionals. This is the first lecture in an upcoming class on failure analysis, focusing on high-tech devices and materials. Investigating why systems fail—whether it's a phone, television, smartwatch, or any other device made up of several components—differs from the failure analysis of a single part, like a resistor, chip, or tube, even though these parts are made up of smaller components. The goal of failure analysis remains unchanged: to identify the root cause of the failure. However, finding the root cause is usually just a step in the process. Understanding the cause allows factories to adjust manufacturing processes, repair or clean tools that contaminated the process, and helps engineers make design changes to improve the final product and reduce or eliminate failures.
Occasionally, determining the root cause is about assigning responsibility in litigation or criminal cases, rather than improving the device. This is why failing parts are sometimes called "golden units"—meaning they are rare and provide a unique chance to gain insights, improve devices or processes, or decide who gets the gold in litigation matters.
Dan Sullivan graduated from UC Berkeley with a BS in Chemistry, followed by a PhD from UC San Diego. His experience spans from the 1980s in Silicon Valley, working in and managing failure and materials analysis labs, as well as reliability and electrical test labs. He is the author of three books and creator of two board games. More information can be found at DJDSbook.com.