IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON DEVICE AND MATERIALS RELIABILITY, VOL. 5, NO. 2, JUNE 2005 167
Introduction to the Special Issue on the 2004 IEEE
International Symposium on the Physical and Failure
Analysis of Integrated Circuits (IPFA)
T
HIS special issue of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ONDEVICE ANDMATERIALSRELIABILITYcovers selected papers from the IEEE International Symposium on Physical and Failure Anal-ysis of Integrated Circuits (IPFA) 2004 held in Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C. Eight papers from the IPFA2004 conference covering the areas of failure mechanisms in high- dielectrics and thin gate dielectric breakdown, failure mechanisms in Cu and low-dielectrics, reliability and failure mechanism study of RF tran-sistors, and low-voltage and high-speed memory devices, and issues related to new device packages are included in this spe-cial issue. Since the IPFA conference focuses on the latest trends in failure analysis in devices and packages to understand the process and product issues for device yield and reliability im-provement, the topics covered are of interest and relevant to semiconductor device professionals.
In the area of device and interconnect failure analysis and re-liability, six papers covering a wide range of topics are included. The first paper deals with the physical and reliability character-istics of Hf-based gate dielectrics on strained-SiGe MOS de-vices while another paper discusses on the hot carrier reliability of the HfSiON dielectric with metal gate. The third paper re-ports the effect of hot-carrier induced degradation on the RF per-formance of SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors. Structural damages and post-breakdown performance of small transistors associated with breakdown in ultra-thin gate oxide stressed at very low voltage are presented in the fourth paper. Two papers
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TDMR.2005.849903
dealing with the electromigration and corrosion study of copper dual damascene technology are included.
To cover the area of package failure and reliability, a paper describing the interface microstructural evolution of lead-free solder in bump metallization technology during reflow and high-temperature stress is presented. This special edition is concluded by a paper on a reliability study of a slow programming issue in advanced low-voltage and high-speed ferroelectric memory devices.
By including these eight papers covering a broad area of de-vice failures and reliability aspects, this special issue is intended to bring the attention of readers to some of the latest trends in integrated circuit/package failure analysis, as well as to the sym-posia covering such trends in a broad spectrum.
KINLEONGPEY, Guest Editor
Nanyang Technological University School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
639798 Singapore
ALASTAIRTRIGG, Guest Editor
Institute of Microelectronics SPT-MDRA
117685 Singapore
STEVECHUNG, Guest Editor
National Chiao Tung University Electronics Engineering Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan, R.O.C.
