Integrated-circuit package, example

Consideration of the electrical properties of materials is often important when materials selection and processing decisions are being made during the design of a component or structure. For example, when we consider an integrated circuit package, the... 

Diffusion Barriers. Diffusion barriers are used in the production of various components in the electronic industry. For example, electrochemically deposited nickel is used as a barrier layer between gold and copper in electronic connectors and solder interconnections. In these applications the product is a trilayer of composition Cu/Ni/Au. In another example, Ni and Co are considered as diffusion barriers and cladding materials in the production of integrated circuits and multichip electronic packaging. In this case the barrier metal (BM), Co or Ni, is the diffusion barrier between conductor and insulator (i.e., Cu and insulator), and the product trilayer is of composition Cu/BM/insulator. The common couple in these applications is the Cu/BM bilayer (BM, the diffusion barrier metal Co, Ni, or Ni-Co alloy). 

Examples of conductive ABS polymer composites include electromagnetic shielding materials (56,57) and electrically conductive composite plastic sheets, which may be used for packaging of integrated circuit devices (58,59). 

Computers, microprocessors, and other microelectronic devices could not exist as we know them today without the technology of depositing thin metal or alloy films with fine lithographic patterns. For example, in a computer, the individual transistors that make up an integrated circuit must be electrically interconnected by a complex network of conducting lines and vias that are deposited above the semiconductor layers. Furthermore, the chips are joined to multi-chip packaging modules, a process in which many electrical connections are simultaneously established by solder balls. 

Unfortunately, the most difficult failure modes to analyse are sometimes also difficult to confirm through testing. For example, it is impossible to insert aU faults for most Integrated Circuits. Software packages may also be used to simulate failures, which allow the equivalent of the fault to be inserted into the circuit simulation and the failure effect determined. 

The basic problem of measurement of thermal parameters of aU solid-state devices and VLSl-chips is the measurement of temperatures of the active components, for example p n junctions, or the integrated circuit chip surface temperature. Nonelectrical techniques, which can be used to determine the operating temperature of structures, involve the use of infrared microradiometry, liquid crystals, and other took, and require that the surface of the operating device chip is directly accessible. The electrical techniques for measuring the temperature of semiconductor chips can be performed on fuUy packaged devices, and use a temperature sensitive electrical parameter (TSEP) of the device, which can be characterized/caUbrated with respect to temperature and subsequently used as the temperature indicator. 

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