Failure Analysis Labs - What Services Do They Provide?

A failure analysis laboratory is a place which is dedicated to finding out why definite chips are defective. Over the years, the field of forensic engineering has evolved to a point where there is a systematic way of drilling down to the root of the issue.

When a complex electronic part malfunctions, it is vital to understand what exactly has gone wrong & more importantly, why. The whole branch of quality control revolves around reducing error rates in manufacturing. Defective chips not only lose money directly, but can also lead to unexpected lawsuits. In order to receive a clear idea of the issue, behaving badly parts are sent for inspection to failure analysis labs.

Electronic Failure Analysis Lab

Though there's plenty of failure analysis techniques for locating out why a specific chip is flawed, an analysis doesn't start with them. In lieu, the first step is to find out more about the defect by analyzing error reports, error rates, histories of failure & circumstances surrounding the error. This way, a lab can extract important information about the error which can pinpoint the source & what kind of issue has occurred.

Therefore even before labs put the chip under a microscope, it's a general idea of what it is looking for. This makes it simple to pick the correct analysis method since each type of analysis reveals a different fault. Stress faults for example cannot be detected using microthermography techniques. The idea is to save as much time, hard work & money as feasible & increase the efficiency of the detection method simultaneously.

A nice lab has technicians that understand how the chips work. This expertise is necessary for plenty of failure analysis techniques such as the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) developed by Bell in 1962. Only when we have looked at all the available information, do they start applying the scientific analysis techniques which failure analysis labs are usually famous for.

Summary

Such labs also use their expertise with earlier situations to make recommendations about why that particular error was caused & what can be done to prevent it. Sometimes it all boils down to human error in some stage of manufacturing & in this way, the method looks a lot like detective work. Quality control in chip manufacturing is meaningless without nice failure analysis labs to back them up.

Thomas Paquette is the founder & president of Insight Analytical Labs, an electrical engineering firm offering electronic failure analysis to the semiconductor & printed circuit board (PCB) industries. Tom is an specialist at assessing new integrated circuit (IC) technologies, implementing failure analysis solutions, improving board-level reliability & supporting IC development efforts.

The failure analysis labs perform the key function of determining why a definite part of an electronic equipment has malfunctioned. Even before the part, say a chip, is placed under a microscope, error reports, error rates, histories of failure & circumstances surrounding the error are examined. Only when that information has been thought about then scientific analysis techniques are applied to the chip. The final purpose is to find out why the particular error occurred & recommend what to do to prevent it.

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