Probabilistic strength characterization of thin semiconductor devices for power electronic applications

Silicon based semiconductor devices are stressed during fabrication, handling and packaging due to significant thermal and mechanical loadings. This introduced stress can cause electrical failure or fracture of the semiconductor dies. In order to predict the probability of failure of arbitrary dies, test approaches for fracture strength estimation of thin semiconductor devices under thermal conditions and the transfer of the gained data to practical applications under consideration of the size effect is shown. Because of the high flexibility of thin dies under bending loads, test specific challenges like non-linearities and buckling effects are discussed. The transfer of the data to reliability estimations is demonstrated for bending of a sintered die and wire bonding applications using a probabilistic approach.