Reliability Evaluation of Semiconductor using Ultrasound

Recently, semiconductor packages trend to be thinner, which makes difficult to detect defects therein. A preconditioning test is generally performed to evaluate the reliability of semiconductor packages. The test procedure includes two scanning acoustic microscope (SAM) tests at the beginning and end of the entire test, in order to help detect physical defects such as delaminations and package cracks. In particular, of primary concern are package cracks and delaminations caused by moisture absorbed under ambient conditions. This paper discusses the failure mechanism associated with the moisture absorbed and encapsulated in semiconductors, and the use SAM to detect failures such as tracks and delaminations grown during the preconditioning test.