New HALT with Physics of Failure (PoF) for Electronics

(26:03 + Q&A) Reza Ghaffarian, Ph.D, Jet Propulsion Laboratory — This talk presents reliability test results for an evaluation functional electronics assembly using highly accelerated life test (HALT) for rapid testing of commercial-off-the shelf (COTS) technologies. Ruggedization for vibration resistances were made based on understanding physics of failure (PoF) mechanisms of packages at assembly level. An evaluation board was selected to have numerous advanced PEM packaging technologies. It had a Flip-Chip Ball Grid Array (FCBGA), a few Fine Pitch BGAs (FPBGAs), a few Quad Flat No-Leads (QFNs), and passives. The evaluation board for ?HALT testing selected such to have a number of advance packaging technologies including FCBGAs, FPBGAs, and QFNs.
The New HALT (??HALT) with PoF follows conventional methods, but with different philosophy. It uses mature electronics hardware and mitigation methods at assembly level. It allows avoidance of early failures, especially those latent defects only detectable under simultaneous thermal cycling and vibration. The following steps were implemented on the evaluation boards, and the test results are presented in detail. First, it established cold/hot temperature limits using a stepwise approach. Second, it established survivability under TCs with increasing the cycling ranges, first, 100 cycles in the range of -30C to 70C and then additional 100 cycles in the range of -40C to 85C. Third, it removed fan and heat sink from FCBGA in preparation for ruggedization. Ruggedization approaches including FCBGA corner filling and bonding the heat sink are implemented and discussed. Finally, first, established vibration limit from 5 to 50 Grms, then, performed simultaneous vibration at 25 Grms with thermal cycling in the range of -40C to 85C. The talk presents detailed results for each step including temperature at which soft failures occurred during cold/hot evaluation for limits, results of inspection by X-ray to determine package types, and define ruggedization methods for vibration resistance improvement using corner staking, corner filling, and underfilling for FCBGAs and FPBGAs.
Bio: Dr. Reza Ghaffarian has more than 40 years of technical and program-management experience in industry, academia, and at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). For the past 31 years at NASA/JPL, he has led R&D efforts in reliability and quality assurance for advanced electronic packaging technologies and has served as a subject-matter expert (SME) on most JPL spaceflight projects—from Mars Pathfinder through the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission. He received the Principal Engineer designation in 1999. Dr. Ghaffarian has authored or co-authored a book, 11 book chapters, and more than 200 technical papers.

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