Abstract
Contamination by particles is one of the major causes of failures in integrated circuits. In some cases, particles may absorb moisture leading to electrochemical migration, dendrite growth, and electrical leakage and short failures. This work presents two case studies of particle induced corrosion of copper wire bond that resulted in an electrical failure. In the first case, adjacent pin resistive short failures were found to fail due to corrosion and electrochemical migration at wires that were in contact with calcium chloride particles. Analysis showed that the highly hygroscopic calcium chloride particles absorbed moisture and resulted in corrosion and electrochemical migration of the copper wires. For the second case, an electrical open failure after temperature cycle reliability test was found to be due to an organophosphorus particle being in contact with the wire.
