IEEE/CPMT Dinner Meeting:

"Alpha Particles, Solder Balls, and Moore's Law" --
Dave Angst, TCAD, Inc.

Wednesday, February 10, 1999
Subsidized buffet dinner ($10) served at 6:30, Presentation (no cost) at 7:30.
Location: FAZ restaurant, at the Four Points Hotel, on Mathilda, north of Hiway 237 and Fwy 101 junction, Sunnyvale
PLEASE RSVP (for dinner and/or meeting) by email to Rena Ayeras, or call our CPMT hotline at 800-686-9366.

OVERVIEW:
As semiconductor chip technology continues to scale according to Gordon Moore's Law into the first decade of the 21st century, several fundamental electrical reliability limits have appeared for the next generation of IC chip and IC packaging technologies. One of these limits is the reliability impact of alpha particles emitted by the solder balls and by other materials present in the next generation of Flip-Chip BGAs, Chip Scale Packages (CSPs), and the C4 package types. The origins and available options for reducing or eliminating these nuclear radiation effects will be discussed.

This 70 minute tutorial will be divided into five parts:

1. Introduction to alpha particle effects on IC chip devices and circuits, according to Gordon Moore's scaling laws (1966-2012);
2. Historical review (1896-1978) of alpha particles, radioactive isotopes and their effects;
3. Sources for low alpha lead and the classic radioactive isotope separation schemes (1896-1978);
4. Current status (1999) for low alpha lead sources from antiquity and the modern isotope separation schemes available in the first decade of the 21st century;
5. Technology options, low alpha material cost models, and predicted IC chip reliability effects for 1999-2012.

This talk should be of interest to IC package designers, IC chip designers, and semiconductor device and reliability engineers who expect to be involved with IC chips having feature sizes ranging from 0.25 microns down to 0.10 microns.

A significant collection of relevant historical and technical reference materials regarding this tutorial topic will be available to the interested attendee.

Dave Angst is President of TCAD, Inc. He holds the MS and PhD degrees in Applied Science from the University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). He has worked at Hughes Aircraft, National Semiconductor, Digital Equipment (now Compaq) and has consulted for several Silicon Valley firms in the areas of semiconductor device and interconnect modeling.