This article explains how alloying elements affect the properties and behaviors of electrical contacts. It describes the composition, strength, hardness, and conductivity of a wide range of contact alloys and composites based on silver, copper, gold, platinum, palladium, tungsten, and molybdenum, and related oxides and carbides.

Resistance welding is a group of processes in which the heat for welding is generated by the resistance to the flow of an electrical current through the parts being joined. This chapter discusses the processes, advantages, and limitations of specific resistance welding processes, namely resistance spot welding, resistance seam welding, projection welding, flash welding, and upset welding.

This article discusses the compositions, properties, and uses of silver, gold, and platinum group metals, including platinum, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium, and osmium. It describes the role of various alloying elements and explains how they affect physical, mechanical, and electrical properties as well as corrosion resistance.

This article addresses the ancillary issues regarding the nanoprobing and characterization of transistors, probing copper metallization layers, and the various imaging techniques. The discussion includes several characterization examples of known transistor failure types, namely four probe transistor characterization, two probe transistor characterization, and probing and characterizing metallization issues. The imaging techniques discussed are those that are specific to atomic force nanoprober or scanning electron microscope based tools. They are current contrast imaging, scanning capacitance imaging, e-beam absorbed current imaging, e-beam induced current imaging, e-beam induced resistance change imaging, and active voltage contrast imaging.

This article presents methods that enable one to consistently, uniformly and quickly remove substrate silicon from units without imparting damage to the structure of interest. It provides examples of electron beam probing and backside nano-probing techniques. The electron beam probing techniques are E-beam Logic State Imaging, Electron-beam Signal Image Mapping, and E-beam Device Perturbation. Backside nano-probing techniques discussed include: Electron Beam Absorbed Current, Electron Beam Induced Resistance Change, four terminal resistance measurements, resistive gate defect identification, and circuit editing. The article also presents methods to prepare electron beam probing samples where some remaining silicon is required for the transistor functions and transmission electron microscope samples from units where the substrate silicon has been partially or completely removed.

This chapter covers the friction and wear behaviors of copper alloys. It describes the compositions and forms of copper available and their suitability for applications involving friction, different types of erosion, and adhesive and abrasive wear.

Nonferrous metals are of commercial interest both as engineering materials and as alloying agents. This chapter addresses both roles, discussing the properties, processing characteristics, and applications of several categories of nonferrous metals, including light metals, corrosion-resistance alloys, superalloys, refractory metals, low-melting-point metals, reactive metals, precious metals, rare earth metals, and metalloids or semimetals. It also provides a brief summary on special-purpose materials, including uranium, vanadium, magnetic alloys, and thermocouple materials.

In the Semiconductor I/C industry, it has been well documented that the proportion of factory and customer field returns attributed to device damage resulting from electrical over-stress (EOS) and electro-static discharge (ESD) can amount to 40 to 50%. This study entailed EOS and ESD simulation using a variety of models, namely the Human Body Model (HBM), the Charged Device Model (CDM) and the so-called Machine Model (MM), and then conducting electrical and physical failure analysis and comparing the results with documented analyses performed on customer field returns and factory failures. It is shown that a distinction can be made between EOS and ESD failures and between the characteristic failure signatures produced by the ESD models. The CDM physical failure location is at the input buffer and in the gate oxide, where as both HBM and MM failures occur mostly in the contacts at the input protection structures.

This chapter discusses three related corrosion mechanisms, galvanic, deposition, and stray-current corrosion, explaining why they occur and how they affect the corrosion process. It includes information on testing and prevention methods along with examples of the type of damage associated with these corrosion mechanisms.

This article discusses electrical testing and recommended procedures for determining the electrical properties of insulating materials, with particular emphasis on plastics. It describes the electrical characteristics of various forms of plastics and also presents definitions of the terms used in connection with testing and specifying plastics for electrical applications.

Post-mortem analysis of photovoltaic modules that have degraded performance is essential for improving the long term durability of solar energy. This article focuses on a general procedure for analyzing a failed module. The procedure includes electrical characterization followed by thermal imaging such as forward bias, reverse bias, and lock-in, and emission imaging such as electroluminescence and photoluminescence imaging.

One of the rotor bearings in an electric motor failed, producing excessive vibrate. The bearing was removed and disassembled, revealing craters and bruises on the inner ring raceway and balls along with evidence of melting and burning of metal. Scanning electron microscopy revealed metal particles near the craters, and energy-dispersive x-ray analysis showed that slivers recovered from the grease had the same composition as the bearing raceway and balls. Based on these observations, it was concluded that the bearing failed due to electrostatic discharge, which would have led to seizure if it continued. The report recommends the use of electrically conductive grease and proper grounding practices.

This article provides an introduction to the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) operation with a focus to localization techniques of the defects combined with some physical failure analysis examples and case studies for memory array failures. It discusses the electrical measurement techniques for array failure analysis. The article then presents know-how-based analysis techniques of array failures by bitmap classification. The limits of bitmapping that lead to well-known localization techniques like thermally induced voltage alteration and optical beam induced resistance change are also discussed. The article concludes by providing information on soft defect localization techniques.

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview over all phenomena related to Voltage Contrast (VC) mechanisms in SEM and FIB. The multiple advantages, possibilities, and limits of active and passive VC failure localization are systemized and discussed. The knowledge of all facts influencing the VC generation (capacitance, leakage, doping, and circuitry) is very helpful for successful failure localization.

This chapter covers the tribological properties of stainless steel and other corrosion-resistant alloys. It describes the metallurgy and microstructure of the basic types of stainless steel and their suitability for friction and wear applications and in environments where they are subjected to liquid, droplet, and solid particle erosion. It also discusses the tribology of nickel- and cobalt-base alloys as well as titanium, zinc, tin, aluminum, magnesium, beryllium, graphite, and different types of wood.