Virtual thermo-mechanical prototyping of microelectronics devices

Abstract

Microelectronics have pervaded our lives for the past fifty years, with massive penetration into health, mobility, safety and security, communications, education, entertainment and virtually every aspect of human lives. The main technology drivers that enabled this expansion are miniaturization and integration. The combination of these two has driven microelectronics technology into an unknown level of complexity and as a consequence, we are confronted with increasing difficulties to meet quality, robustness and reliability requirements. In this thesis, a general virtual thermo-mechanical prototyping framework is developed that is able to predict the non-linear responses in microelectronics devices prior to physical prototyping and/or reliability testing. The uniqueness of the developed framework relies, for the first time, on the following three aspects: · The development of advanced simulation-based optimisation algorithms and methods, being Design Of Experiments (DOE) and Response Surface Models (RSM). · The development of accurate and efficient thermo-mechanical prediction models able to capture the damage responses within microelectronics devices during manufacturing and reliability qualification tests. · To seamlessly and efficiently integrate the prediction models with the optimisation algorithms. The developed framework is applied to four case studies of reliability topics in microelectronics devices. The results of these four case studies correlate well with experiments and/or field returns and prove the predictability of the developed techniques.Mechanical Maritime and Materials Engineerin