Premium
Plastic‐strain of aluminium interconnections during pulsed operation of IGBT multichip modules
Author(s) -
Ciappa Mauro,
Malberti Paolo
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
quality and reliability engineering international
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.913
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1099-1638
pISSN - 0748-8017
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-1638(199607)12:4<297::aid-qre21>3.0.co;2-c
Subject(s) - insulated gate bipolar transistor , power cycling , aluminium , materials science , wire bonding , lift (data mining) , failure mechanism , bipolar junction transistor , common emitter , chip , electrical engineering , electronic engineering , optoelectronics , structural engineering , transistor , voltage , power (physics) , composite material , engineering , computer science , reliability (semiconductor) , physics , quantum mechanics , data mining
Catastrophic burn‐out occurring during power‐cycling of insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) multichip modules has been observed to arise as a secondary failure mechanism caused by the lifting of the emitter aluminium bonding wires. In fact, the successive lift‐off of the aluminium wires turns in a current crowding through few IGBT cells with consequent triggering of the internal parasitic thyristor‐structure. Based on failure analysis data, this paper presents an exaustive description of the symptoms and a simple qualitative model for the time‐dependent lift‐off of aluminium bond wires in IGBT modules. This power‐cycling induced failure mechanism (occurring in the field and during accelerated tests) is described in terms of plastic deformation of the aluminium interconnections (bond wires and chip‐metallization) during pulsed operation. Some practical conclusions are finally drawn for power cycle testing and for optimal thermal design.