Failure
Analysis (FA) Equipment
Setting up a
failure analysis laboratory from scratch is not easy nor cheap. It
goes without saying that the process of setting up an FA lab requires
diligent planning up-front. The two major aspects of setting up an
FA lab are the preparation of the facility and the
purchase of the
FA equipment.
Much thought
needs to go into the correct choice of the FA equipment, since a lot of
these are quite
expensive.
Most companies set up their FA lab in stages, gradually building up the FA
capability of the lab over time. Many FA managers follow three
(3) stages (Basic,
Good,
and Advanced
capabilities) in setting up their FA labs, which are presented in
Tables 1 to 3 below.
Table 1.
Basic FA Capability
|
FA Equipment |
Purpose |
Estimated Cost (USD) |
|
Curve Tracer and Break-out
Boxes |
I/V
Curve Tracing |
10K - 20K |
|
Digital Multimeters |
Bench Testing |
5K - 10K |
|
Power Supplies/Signal
Generators |
Bench Testing |
5K - 10K |
|
Oscilloscope |
Bench Testing |
10K - 20K |
|
Low-power Microscope |
Optical
Inspection |
5K - 10K |
|
High-power Microscope |
Optical Inspection |
10K - 50K |
|
Fume Hood and Glassware |
Manual Decapsulation |
5K - 15K |
|
Vise and Assorted Hand Tools |
Mechanical Decapsulation |
<1K |
Table 2.
Good FA Capability
|
FA Equipment |
Purpose |
Estimated Cost (USD) |
|
Microprobing Station |
Probing / Thermography |
40K - 100K |
|
Laser Cutter |
Circuit Isolation |
20K - 40K |
|
Microsectioning Equipment |
Cross-sectioning |
40K - 80K |
|
High-Resolution X-ray System |
X-ray
Radiography |
100K - 200K |
|
Automatic Decapsulation System |
Decapsulation |
20K - 30K |
|
Reactive Ion Etcher |
Die
Delayering |
40K - 60K |
|
SEM/EDX System |
SEM /
EDX Analysis |
300K - 400K |
Table 3.
Advanced FA Capability
FA
Techniques: Failure
Verification;
Optical
Inspection;
Xray
Radiography;
Curve Tracing;
Decapsulation;
Sectioning;
Microthermography; LEM;
Microprobing;
Die
Deprocessing;
Focused
Ion Beam;
SEM/TEM;
Acoustic
Microscopy;
Other
FA Techniques
See Also:
Failure
Analysis;
Package Failures; Die
Failures;
Reliability Engineering;
Reliability Modeling
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