Experimental Study of Microcircuit Degradation Due To High Power Electrical Transient

摘要

This paper describes the results of a program to study the nature of failure due to electrical overstress on a microcircuit. The square wave damage testing was performed over a pulse width range of 10 nanoseconds to 1 microsecond for this device in an unbiased configuration. The device functional operating parameters were monitored prior to the pulse test and following each energy pulse as an indication of the occurrence of permanent damage. At the outset of the square wave damage experiments, it was observed that there was some variability in the damage level between inverter circuits contained within different microcircuit chips tested under similar conditions, as well as between circuits within the same chip. To economically minimize the effects of these variations in the correlation of the square wave energy-power-time damage data analysis, the square wave tests for a particular pulse input polarity were performed on individual gates within the same device over the pulse width regime of interest. The square wave pulse power damage effects on the various operating parameters of the inverter circuit shows an indication of the relationship of second breakdown type response to both pulse polarity and permanent damage. The results of the Mas experiments on the microcircuit device were summarized. The effect of DC bias on the one microsecond square wave damage levels of the "input and ground" terminal pair was evaluated. The vulnerability of the circuits were not influencedby Vcc current limiting.