Reliability of Thin (Metal) Film Resistors Impact of Pulse Screening
Abhijit D. Rane1, Venkat N. Ghodke2
1Abhijit D. Rane, Electronics and Telecommunication University of Pune, India.
2Venkat N. Ghodke, Electronics and Telecommunication University of Pune, India.
Manuscript received on May 21, 2014. | Revised Manuscript received on June 25, 2014. | Manuscript published on June 30, 2014. | PP: 255-250 | Volume-3, Issue-5, June 2014. | Retrieval Number: E3242063514/2013©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: Field defects are the most delicate and severe failures passive components can have. The cost of the individual failed component is quite low, however, the consequential losses and liability-related costs could be extremely high. The impact of defects could go as far as “No-Go” for vehicles in automotive or aerospace applications or, even worse, in safety-relevant equipment. Specified failure levels of 0,05 ppm (parts per million) for thin-film resistors are quite common in quality assurance contracts between component supplier and customer today. That sounds quite low. But in practice that still means accepting a thousand more or less severe field defects amongst approx. 20 billion produced, sold, and used metal-film resistors world-wide per year. In a long-term study (more than 8 years) the root causes of field defects on thin-film resistors have been studied. Two major groups were isolated and Investigated intensively: Defects cause by (specified) pulse loads, and Defects caused by corrosion of resistive films. Several improvements by reengineering on product and manufacturing process were developed by project teams. The effects will be discussed in detail. As a result of this basic long-term process the failure rate of thin film resistor has been dramatically reduced by three orders of magnitude, down towards sub-ppb-level (parts per billion).Furthermore through this study new knowledge has been gained on control loops of process changes affecting field defect minimization. Paper will show the length of time after which the effectiveness of a Corrective action will become obvious in field data, and the length of time from introduction of an optimized process before significant effects on failure rates in field become measurable.
Keywords: Field defects, Pulse load application, Electrochemical corrosion, Failure rate, Defect level.