Preview of IRPS 2006

Timothy Collopy, director of quality at IBM Systems and Technology Group, will give the keynote address at this year's IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS), to be held March 28-30 in San Jose. His topic, "Adaptation of Reliability Methodologies to Market Expectations and Technology Roadmaps," addresses the needs in the marketplace for higher performance, improved reliability and faster time-to-market, which is occurring alongside device manufacturer's move to new materials, structures and process/design interactions. As a result, Collopy calls for improved quality processes and efforts to stress, analyze and repair new failure modes during new technology development in order to accommodate unique customer requirements (e.g., foundry) or industry standards (e.g., JEDEC). He says that given feedback from a full spectrum of users, models and methods that allow for continuous improvement of quality processes can be developed just as customers continually demand improved microelectronic products and technologies.

"The 21st century has been good for IRPS," reported Carole D. Graas, general chair of the 2006 IRPS in a statement. "Every year we've seen a steady increase in attendance and in the number and quality of the technical paper submissions. I am particularly pleased with a new offering this year, 'Jewel Recovery from Past IRPS Proceedings,' where jewels of information from digitally inaccessible IRPS technical papers from past proceedings are explored for the benefit of our attendees' research," Graas said. The IRPS committee selected 100 papers, with topics ranging from high-k dielectric and product and circuit reliability to process integration and assembly and packaging reliability.

A sampling of select papers is shown in the Table. Among these, Intel's article on the recovery effects of flash memories will present an accelerated reliability model that comprehends cycle count, cycle rate, cycle temperature, retention time and retention temperature in the partial recovery that occurs between program and erase cycles. Texas Instruments' article on the effects of via processing on electromigration looks at the interaction between barrier metal processing and different types of via voiding mechanisms. In an article by researchers at the University of Newcastle and the University of Edinburgh , direct experimental measurements of electromigration-induced stress were performed on aluminum interconnects using a series of microrotating stress sensors. The results showed a compressive stress gradient along the line, which corresponds with that predicted by conventional mass transport theory. They project the technique will be scalable to the end of the ITRS.