Copper wire interconnect reliability evaluation using in-situ High Temperature Storage Life (HTSL) tests

This paper describes the use of in-situ High Temperature Storage Life (HTSL) tests based on a four point resistance method to evaluate Cu wire interconnect reliability. Although the same set up was used in the past to monitor Au-Al ball bond degradation, a different approach was needed for this system. Using conventional statistical methods of failure probability distributions and a fixed failure criterion were found to be unsuitable in this case. Besides this, tests usually take very long until a sufficient percentage of the population have failed according to that criterion. A simple physical model was used to electrically quantify ball bond degradation due to the prevailing failure mechanism in a substantially smaller amount of test time. The method enabled the determination of activation energies for a number of moulding compounds and is extremely useful for a fast screening of such materials regarding their suitability for Cu wire.