Accurate Quantitative Physics-of-Failure Approach to Integrated Circuit Reliability

Modern electronics typically consist of microprocessors and other complex integrated circuits (ICs) such as FPGAs, ADCs, and memory. They are susceptible to electrical, mechanical and thermal modes of failure like other components on a printed circuit board, but due to their materials, complexity and roles within a circuit, accurately predicting a failure rate has become difficult, if not impossible. Development of these critical components has conformed to Moore's Law, where the number of transistors on a die doubles approximately every two years. This trend has been successfully followed over the last four decades through reduction in transistor sizes creating faster, smaller ICs with greatly reduced power dissipation. Although this is great news for developers and users of high performance equipment, including consumer products and analytical instrumentation, a crucial, yet underlying reliability risk has emerged. Semiconductor failure mechanisms, which are far worse at these minute feature sizes (tens of nanometers), result in higher failure rates, shorter device lifetimes and unanticipated early device wearout. This is of special concern to users whose requirements include long service lifetimes and rugged environmental conditions, such as aerospace, defense, and other high performance (ADHP) industries. To that end, the Aerospace Vehicle Systems Institute (AVSI) has conducted research in this area, and DfR Solutions has performed much of the work as a contractor to AVSI. Physics-of-Failure (PoF) knowledge and an accurate mathematical approach which utilizes semiconductor formulae, industry accepted failure mechanism models, and device functionality can access reliability of those integrated circuits vital to system stability. Currently, four semiconductor failure mechanisms that exist in silicon-based ICs are analyzed: Electromigration (EM), Time Dependent Dielectric Breakdown (TDDB), Hot Carrier Injection (HCI), and Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI). Mitigation of these inherent failure mechanisms, including those considered wearout, is possible only when reliability can be quantified. Algorithms have been folded into a software application not only to calculate a failure rate, but also to produce confidence intervals and lifetime curves, using both steady state and wearout failure rates, for the IC under analysis. The algorithms have been statistically verified through testing and employ data and formulae from semiconductor materials (including technology node parameters), circuit fundamentals, transistor behavior, circuit design and fabrication processes. Initial development has yielded a user friendly software module with the ability to address siliconbased integrated circuits of the 0.35m, 0.25m, 0.18m, 0.13m and 90nm technology nodes. INTRODUCTION In the ADHP industries, there is considerable interest in assessing the long term reliability of electronics whose anticipated lifetimes extend beyond those of consumer "throw away" electronics. Because complex integrated circuits within their designs may face wearout or even failure within the period of useful life, it is necessary to investigate the effects of use and environmental conditions on these components. The main concern is that submicron process technologies drive device wearout into the regions of useful life well before wearout was initially anticipated to occur. The continuous scaling down of semiconductor feature sizes raises challenges in electronic circuit reliability prediction. Smaller and faster circuits cause higher current densities, lower voltage tolerances and higher electric fields, which make the devices more vulnerable to early failure. Emerging new generations of electronic devices require improved tools for reliability prediction in order to investigate new manifestations of existing failure mechanisms, such as NBTI, EM, HCI, and TDDB. Working with AVSI, DfR Solutions has developed an integrated circuit (IC) reliability calculator using a multiple failure mechanism approach. This approach successfully models the simultaneous degradation behaviors of multiple failure mechanisms on integrated circuit devices. The multiple mechanism model extrapolates independent acceleration factors for each semiconductor mechanism of concern based on the transistor stress states within each distinct functional group. Integrated circuit lifetime is calculated from semiconductor materials and technology node, IC complexity, and operating conditions. A major input to the tool is integrated circuit complexity. This characteristic has been approached by using specific functionality cells called functional groups. The current set of functional groups covers memory-based devices and analog-todigital conversion circuitry. Technology node process parameters, functional groups and their functionality, and field/test operating conditions are used to perform the calculations. Prior work verified the statistical assessment of the algorithms for aerospace electronic systems and confirmed that no single semiconductor failure mechanism dominates failures in the field. Two physics-of-failure approaches are used within the tool to determine each of four semiconductor failure mechanisms’ contribution to the overall device failure rate. The tool calculates a failure rate and also produces confidence intervals and a lifetime curve, using both steady state and wearout failure rates, for the part under analysis. Reliability prediction simulations are the most powerful tools developed over the years to cope with these challenging demands. Simulations may provide a wide range of predictions, starting from the lower-level treatment of physics-of-failure (PoF) mechanisms up to high-level simulations of entire devices [1, 2]. As with all simulation problems, primary questions need to be answered, such as: “How accurate are the simulation results in comparison to in-service behavior?” and “What is the confidence level achieved by the simulations?” Thus the validation and calibration of the simulation tools becomes a most critical task. Reliability data generated from field failures best represents the electronic circuit reliability in the context of the target system/application. Field failure rates represent competing failure mechanisms' effects and include actual stresses, in contrast to standard industry accelerated life tests. In this paper, the failure rates of recorded field data from 2002 to 2009 were determined for various device process technologies and feature sizes (or “technology nodes”). Theses failure rates are used to verify the PoF models and a competing failure approach, as implemented in the software. Comparison of the actual and simulated failure rates shows a strong correlation. Furthermore, comparing the field failure rates with those obtained from the standard industry High Temperature Operating Life (HTOL) Test reveals the inadequacy of the HTOL to predict integrated circuit (IC) failure rates. The validation process and its data sources are illustrated in Figure 1.