Scope of the conference
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 behavior and reliability of organic and flexible electronics
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.
Topics of the conference
- Degradation mechanisms and failures in advanced device and interconnect systems
- Stress-related issues for advanced nonvolatile memories, including embedded phase-change memory
- Materials behavior at low temperatures for quantum computing, reliabilty-related aspects
- Scaling limitations of materials
- Role of microstructure and interfaces on mechanical behaviour of nanostructures
- Stress and thermal effects in advanced packaging, heterogeneous integration, and chip-package interaction
- Thermo-mechanical properties and stress: Measurements and simulation
- Advanced characterization techniques
- Compact modeling and statistical methods in circuit/device life-time assessment
- Thermal and stress-driven floor-planning methodology, stress mitigation techniques, and design technology co-optimization
- Reliability physics and engineering, damage and failure mechanisms
- Stability and lifetime of organic and flexible electronics
- Lifetime and ageing of nanoscale materials, structures and systems at low and high temperatures
- Component (device / interconnect) reliability vs. system reliability
- Reliability of products at harsh environments
- Reliability of power devices