A procedure for identifying the failure mechanism responsible for a pin-to-pin short in plastic mold compound integrated circuit packages

Thursday, November 6, 2008 - 12:45 PM

A procedure for identifying the failure mechanism responsible for a pin-to-pin short in plastic mold compound integrated circuit packages

C. M. Nail, Independent, San Jose, CA; J. J. Rocha, L. Y. Wong, National Semiconductor Corporation, Santa Clara, CA

Summary: A pin-to-pin short in an epoxy IC package could not be identified with conventional x-ray analysis. A combination of SQUID, parallel-grinding, OBIRCH and high-resolution low-power x-ray analysis techniques identified the short as copper leadframe residue.