In this review, recent trends in microelectronics packaging reliability are summarized. We review the technology from early packaging concepts, including wire bond and BGA, to advanced techniques used in HI schemes such as 3D stacking, interposers, fan-out packaging, and more recently developed silicon interconnect fabric integration. This review includes approaches for both design modification studies and packaged device validation. Methods are explored for compatibility in new complex packaging assemblies. Suggestions are proposed for optimizations of the testing practices to account for the challenges anticipated in upcoming HI packaging schemes.

Induction or asynchronous AC motors are widely used in the electromechanical industries. However, the selection of an appropriate motor for specific drive applications represents a non‐trivial task. The most effective and universally accepted method is to use equivalent T‐circuit for this purpose. Parameter determination of equivalent circuit should be done relatively fast and accurately. This article describes a novel and simplified method for the estimation of equivalent circuit parameters, which is exclusively based on the manufacturer's datasheet. The proposed method is based on the synergetic interaction between the numerical and analytical dimensionless approach using the Thevenin theorem. Initially, rated motor parameters and unknown variables of the equivalent circuit are combined into dimensionless expressions using the Thevenin approach. This method is simple, original, and useful to prevent instability in the numerical solution. Importantly, the high convergence of a solution and relatively fast calculation of parameters reveals the significant novelty of the proposed method. This method provides accurate and sustainable results for a wide range of low voltage asynchronous motors with different rotational velocities, torque, and power range from a few to hundreds of kilowatts. The proposed method is validated by the application of three types of asynchronous AC motors.

Assessing the reliability of electronic devices, circuits and packages requires accurate lifetime predictions and identification of failure modes. This paper demonstrates a new approach to the extraction of underlying failure mechanism distribution parameters from data corresponding to a combined distribution of two distinct mechanisms. Specifically, a differential evolution approach is developed for parameter identification in competing-risks and mixture models. Use of multiple metrics for performance evaluation shows that our approach outperforms the best-known methods in the literature. Numerical results are shown for simulated data and also for package-level and device-level real failure data. On the modeling of industrial package failure data, our approach provides up to 92% reduction in mean squared error, up to 7% increase in log-likelihood and up to 61% decrease in the maximum Kolmogorov-Smirnov distance. On ring oscillator data obtained from our laboratory experiments, the corresponding improvements are 94%, 5% and 77%, respectively. For both simulated and real datasets, the improvement in performance is validated through statistical tests of significance. An application of the approach is demonstrated for empirical extraction of the temperature-dependence of parameters from lifetime data at different test temperatures.

Here a solution for a Microchip Health Monitoring (MHM) system using MTOL (Multi-Temperature Operational Life) reliability testing assessment data is proposed. The module monitors frequency degradation over time compared to lab tested data. Since trends in performance degradation in recently developed devices have transitioned from multiple failure mechanisms to a single dominant failure mechanism, development of the monitor is greatly simplified. The monitor uses a novel circuit customized to deliver optimum accuracy by combining the concepts of ring oscillator (RO) and phase locked loop (PLL) circuits. The modified circuit proposed is a new form of the frequency locked loop (FLL) circuit. We demonstrate that the collection of frequency degradation data from the ring circuits of each test produces Weibull distributions with steep slopes. This implies that the monitor can predict accurate end-of-life (EOL) predictions at early stages of chip degradations. The design of the microchip health monitoring system projected in this work can have great benefit in all systems using FPGA and ASIC devices.