This book is a comprehensive overview of the discoveries in composition, growth and control of gold-aluminum intermetallic compounds in microelectronic interconnects known as purple plague. It focuses on the history of detection, theory, and understanding of the gold-aluminum interface reliability issues.
Purple Plague in Microelectronics presents research on the phenomenon of purple plague from the earliest days to the present. The authors explain intricate scientific aspects to understand cause and effect of this reliability issue in microelectronics in a way that ensures the content is understandable to readers of various educational levels, novice to expert, while satiating the needs of the engineering personnel closely associated with work related to the gold-aluminum interfacial integrity. The discovery of void formation leading to porosity in the purple phase and the resulting joint failure is discussed, along with detailed analyses of the various phases, metallurgy characteristics, and diffusion phenomenon at the gold-aluminum interface. They provide detailed drawings, graphs, charts, models, and tables, which allow easy comprehension of concepts and phenomenon through visual aids. The book explains various methods for evaluating the quality and reliability of wire bond joints, highlighting the relative advantages of each approach. Techniques such as shear testing and bond resistance testing are discussed in detail. It also examines the role of ingredients used in packaging material and the gold wire itself, supported by relevant mathematical models
Intended for electronic assembly engineers, design engineers, process development engineers, material scientists, electronic industry supervisors and managers, this book is an excellent reference for anyone involved in defect control and reliability in gold wire bonding.
Syed Sajid Ahmad, Ph.D., contributed to quality and reliability enhancement of assembly processes at Intel (1979-1989), especially wire bonding.
Ahmad was involved in semiconductor packaging development at National Semiconductor (1990) and managed quality at GigaBit/TriQuint (1990-1991), a GaAs device company.
His major work at Micron Technology (1991-2003) involved, materials enhancement resulting in high reliability products and the development and implementation of advanced packaging of semiconductors.
At the Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering (2003-2015) based at the North Dakota State University, his focus was on enhancing research and manufacturing capabilities at the center in the areas of thin film, thick film, advanced packaging (CSP) and surface mount technology (SMT).
At Crossfire Technologies (2018-2019), Ahmad contributed to the development and enhancement of assembly processes.
He has over 40 publications and presentations and holds 54 US patents.
Dr. Rich C. Blish II is a retired veteran, having worked in semiconductor reliability physics for the entirety of his 45- year career.
All of his degrees are from Caltech, Pasadena: BS in Physics; MS and Ph.D in Materials Science in 1967.
Rich spent two years with Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, on the PicturePhone project; eleven years with Signetics (subsidiary of Phillips), San Jose, CA, doing analytical chemistry; fifteen years with Intel, Santa Clara, CA, in Package Reliability; eleven years with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Sunnyvale, CA, as an AMD Fellow in reliability modelling; and was a Spansion Fellow.
He has been a prolific author, having written about 60 patents and about 60 peer-reviewed scientific papers winning awards for paper quality at the International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS) and the ECTC. The papers (and some book chapters) are on a variety of topics, for example, failure analysis, metallurgy, and the physics of radiation damage.
Dr. Blish is a past General Chair and Board Chair for IRPS. He chaired the Sematech RTAB in 2000 and 2007 and has been an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability.
