Risk and reliability assessment about a manufacturing issue in a power MOSFET for automotive applications

In the automotive semiconductor industry, risk assessments are requested by customers on quality incidents that happen in the assembly line or in field. More rarely, in a die business context, such a study is requested about a defect observed during the optical inspection performed by the customers on the known good dice after assembly. This article deals with the case of pin holes in the top metal surface of a MOSFET component. The risk assessment is addressing detection, occurrence and severity of the defect: this implies process and failure analysis. Also, reliability has been carried out, by completing accelerated and typical stress tests.