Failure Mechanisms Driven Reliability Models for Power Electronics: A Review

Abstract

Miniaturization as well as manufacturing processes that electronics devices are subjected to, often results to increase in operational parameters such as current density, temperature, mechanical load, with potential to induce stresses that may be detrimental to device reliability. Past studies have identified some failure mechanisms common to these devices. Examples of these failure mechanisms include fatigue, electromigration, stress induced voiding, corrosion, conduction filament formation and time dependent dielectric breakdown. While some review activities related to reliability model development based on these failure mechanisms can be easily found in literature, to the best of our knowledge, a single review paper, which captures the reliability model progresses made over the past four decades across these failure mechanisms in comparison with Standards such as Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) and Institute for Printed Circuits (IPC) is to the best of our knowledge lacking. To fill this gap, a detailed review of failure mechanism driven reliability models, with emphasis on physics of failure (PoF) for power electronics was carried out in this paper. Although, other failure mechanisms exist, our review is only limited to fatigue, electromigration, stress induced voiding, corrosion, conduction filament formation and time dependent dielectric breakdown. It was found that, most reliability research modelling efforts are yet to be fully integrated into Standards.

Thermal Fatigue Failure of Micro-Solder Joints in Electronic Packaging Devices: A Review

“…Therefore, the damage is preformed visible by the adjacent contiguous elements, only for visualization aims. For the prediction of the solder fatigue life, researchers use various test methods (such as the combination of mechanical vibration and thermal cycling load test, fracture mechanics and disturbed state mixed method, and global and local methods) to investigate the deformation of solder joints under cyclic load and develop special test equipment for reliability assessment to predict the solder fatigue life [55][56][57][58]. Another researcher designed a hybrid fatigue modeling method to simulate the crack trajectory of solder joints and predict its fatigue life, which has been verified by lead-free and tin-lead solders and has achieved good results [59,60].…”

A Study on the Reliability Evaluation of a 3D Packaging Storage Module under Temperature Cycling Ultimate Stress Conditions

“…These models can reflect the fatigue patterns of solder joints from different perspectives, including accuracy and application range, so that they are suitable for predicting lifespan fatigue values under different stress conditions or failure types. The Darveaux model [19], an energy-based model used to determine the fatigue lifetime of solder joints, was used in this study to perform a prediction analysis.…”

Reliability Meta-modelling of Power Components

“…To assure the required reliability of power components under application-specific load conditions, end-users must carry out time-consuming and costly activities, e.g. substantial physical and reliability tests, often complemented with complex highfidelity physics-based simulations, to characterise, evaluate and assure their reliability performance [4,5].…”

“…The deployment of reliability assessment approaches that rely on simulating the physics-of-failure in the power electronic components is increasingly recognised as a powerful and efficient strategy to gain insights into the reliability performance and lifetime of power electronics [6]. While several failure modes and mechanisms at the package level can occur and thus have a direct impact on reliability, it is the thermal fatigue damage which is of prime concern [5]. Temperature cycling loads make the die attachment and interconnection layers (commonly solder) and the wire bonds susceptible to failure under modes such as interfacial cracking and lift-off, receptively.…”