Abstract:

Early detection of avalanche breakdown in an embedded planar capacitor dielectric is addressed in this paper. These failures were observed during accelerated temperature and voltage aging of embedded planar capacitors. At the time of avalanche breakdown there was a sharp drop in the value of insulation resistance. There was no trend in the values of insulation resistance before failure, making the detection of these failures challenging. However it was observed that the value of dissipation factor fluctuated before the drop in the insulation resistance. A statistical hypothesis test known as the sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) was applied to the dissipation factor data to detect an increase in the variance of dissipation factor. This approach provided a means for early detection of avalanche breakdown failures.

Keywords: Embedded planar capacitor, temperature and voltage aging, avalanche breakdown, prognostics and health management.

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