Failure Analysis

Calterah’s IC Failure Analysis (FA) process aims to identify the root cause of a device failure by electrical and physical means, so as to ensure the smooth transition to the mass production of a new product and continuously improve its functions and quality.

Calterah not only boasts an experienced product engineering team, but also works closely with top third-party labs to perform efficient and accurate FA.

FA Process

1. Background Information Collection

Once a faulty device is returned to Calterah, our product engineers will first confirm the failure with the customer-end or application-end, and then try to reproduce the failure and do some preparation like solder ball repair for further FA.

In this step, we collect the following information:

• When and at which manufacturing procedure the failure was observed; quantity of the affected devices and lot information
• Description of the failure or malfunction
• Onsite inspection record of the failing device, such as pictures of the appearance and X-Ray images

2. Electrical Verification

In this step, we will identify and locate the failing component through electrical methods, including ATE and I/V Curve measurement.

3. Non-Destructive Failure Mechanism

Once the failing component is located, non-destructive analysis will be conducted to determine whether or not there is a defect in the device package area covering the component, using X-ray, SAT (Scanning Acoustic Tomography), OM (Optical Microscopy), etc.

4. Destructive Failure Mechanism

If there is no defect in the package, we remove the device package to expose the silicon die for further analysis.

Several techniques are involved in the step. We stimulate the die with signals through the IO pads to detect the defective signals in the die. Once a defective signal has been found, a common technique used is to remove the package layers of the defective area, and probe under an electron microscope or do an elemental analysis to determine the physical defects.

5. FA Report

In the final step, we develop an improvement plan based on the FA results, so as to avoid latent failures of future products.