Overall
More than ever before, materials-driven product innovations in semiconductor industry and shorter time-to-market introductions for new micro- and nanoelectronic products require high advancement rates and tight coupling between research, development and manufacturing. Since novel product design and process steps, and particularly the integration of new materials, require the understanding of stress-related phenomena to ensure the requested product lifetime, reliability physics and engineering as well as materials engineering and nano-scale materials characterization are considered as fundamental drivers for innovation in semiconductor industry.
Traditionally, this series of conferences has been focused on stress arising in micro- and nano-scale structures of on-chip interconnect stacks and advanced packaging structures. This thermomechanical stress can lead to degradation phenomena such as crack propagation caused by chip-package interaction and to the acceleration of known reliability-limiting processes in backend-of-line stacks such as electromigration and time-dependent dielectric breakdown. The 17th conference will include two new focus areas:
- Reliability at harsh environments (e.g. space, automotive)
- Materials properties at low temperatures (e.g. for quantum computing).
The conference will cover the whole range from fundamental research to industrial applications. It will provide a forum for scientists and engineers from universities, research institutions and industry to discuss current challenges and future scenarios related to reliability and stress-induced phenomena in micro- and nanoelectronics.