Early Reliability Assessment Using Deep Censoring

Published

January 1, 2003

Author(s)

Harry A. Schafft, Linda M. Head, Jason Gill, Timothy D. Sullivan

Abstract

A method is described for making direct characterizations of the early part of the intrinsic electromigration fail-time distribution of interconnects. The method involves stressing a large number of test lines only long enough for a relatively few lines to fail, enough to characterize the percentile of interest. Groups of test lines are electrically monitored to detect failures without having to measure the many lines on test individually. Two types of deep censoring are described: deep censoring without removals (where more than one line failure in a group can be detected with confidence) and deep censoring with removals (where, when one failure occurs, the other lines in the group are removed from the test). Sample estimates of sigma and one or more early percentiles of the distribution are corrected for bias and their confidence limits calculated. Deep censoring offers important benefits over the present practice of placing tens of test lines on test to obtain sample estimates of t₅₀ and sigma that are used to extrapolate to the early part of the fail-time distribution. The benefits are reduced testing times, better confidence of the sample estimates of early percentiles, and the ability to detect defect fail-time populations. A detailed procedure to implement the method is provided in the appendix.

Citation

Microelectronics Reliability

Volume

2003

Issue

43

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

censored data, early percentile failure, electromigration, interconnects, reliability, stress tests

Citation

Schafft, H. , Head, L. , Gill, J. and Sullivan, T. (2003), Early Reliability Assessment Using Deep Censoring, Microelectronics Reliability (Accessed April 26, 2026)

Additional citation formats