The Importance Of Aging Simulation In IC Design


Electronics reliability has been an important quality criterion in the automotive sector and in industrial automation for years. Electronics in this sector have to achieve product lifetimes of 10+ years under partially harsh environmental conditions. But the reliability of electronics is also becoming more important in other fields. For example, end customers now keep consumer products longer, ... » read more

Inner Spacer Engineering to Improve Mechanical Stability in Channel-Release Process of Nanosheet FETs


  Abstract "Mechanical stress is demonstrated in the fabrication process of nanosheet FETs. In particular, unwanted mechanical instability stemming from gravity during channel-release is covered in detail by aid of 3-D simulations. The simulation results show the physical weakness of suspended nanosheets and the impact of nanosheet thickness. Inner spacer engineering based on geometr... » read more

Time To Rethink Memory Chip Design And Verification


It’s no secret to anyone that semiconductor development grows more challenging all the time. Each new process technology node packs more transistors into each die, creating more electrical issues and making heat dissipation harder. Floorplanning, logic synthesis, place and route, timing analysis, electrical analysis, and functional verification stretch electronic design automation (EDA) tools... » read more

Designing Chips In A ‘Lawless’ Industry


The guideposts for designing chips are disappearing or becoming less relevant. While engineers today have many more options for customizing a design, they have little direction about what works best for specific applications or what the return on investment will be for those efforts. For chip architects, this is proving to be an embarrassment of riches. However, that design freedom comes wit... » read more

MEMS: New Materials, Markets And Packaging


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about future developments and challenges for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) with Gerold Schropfer, director of MEMS products and European operations in Lam Research's Computational Products group, and Michelle Bourke, senior director of strategic marketing for Lam's Customer Support Business Group. What follows are excerpts of that conversation.... » read more

The Importance Of Product Burn-In Test


Product burn-in (BI) is an indispensable step in the production test flow to ensure good quality and a properly functioning product for the customer. Amkor takes pride in rating ‘quality delivered to the customer’ as one of the highest corporate virtues. See figure 1. Fig. 1: Defects per Million (DPM) and DPM goal reported over five years. Burned-in integrated circuits (ICs) have a ... » read more

Geo-Spatial Outlier Detection


Comparing die test results with other die on a wafer helps identify outliers, but combining that data with the exact location of an outlier offers a much deeper understanding of what can go wrong and why. The main idea in outlier detection is to find something in or on a die that is different from all the other dies on a wafer. Doing this in the context of a die’s neighbor has become easie... » read more

Automotive Innovations In Semiconductors


By Jeff Barnum, Janay Camp, and Cathy Perry Sullivan The semiconductor industry performed better than expected in 2020 despite the impact of COVID-19 on the global economy and is preparing for accelerated growth in 2021 and beyond. The global coronavirus pandemic significantly increased demand for communications electronics and fueled the growth in cloud computing to support remote work and ... » read more

Design For Test Data


As design pushes deeper into data-driven architectures, so does test. Geir Eide, director for product management of DFT and Tessent Silicon Lifecycle Solutions at Siemens Digital Industries Software, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about a subtle but significant shift for designing testability into chips so that test data can be used at multiple stages during a device’s lifetime. » read more

When Failure Is Not An Option: Improving Medical Device Reliability


Medical electronics are expected to operate safely over extended periods of time to provide monitoring, therapeutic or life-sustaining functions for patients. Without built-in reliability, these devices could experience failures or malfunctions that greatly increase the possibility of infection or death. In the movie Apollo 13, NASA’s Gene Kranz (played by actor Ed Harris) made the phrase “... » read more

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