Abstract:

This paper reviews those key studies describing the mean time-to-failure of plastic encapsulated microcircuits as a function of steady state temperature and relative humidity, using phenomenological, activation energy based reliability models. Other studies are then presented to demonstrate the limitations of these models with respect to their applicability to specific failure mechanisms, environmental conditions, manufacturing processes and vendors. Finally, the paper addresses the monotonic increase in activation energy which has occurred over the years.
 

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