Life issues, robustness consequences and reliability challenges for Very Deep Sub Micron technologies

Reliability and robustness are strongly linked: aging amplifies robustness issues while environmental stress accelerates aging. As Very Deep Sub Micron (VDSM) technologies offer early wear out and intrinsically lower margins, lifetime and EMC become a coupled challenge that underlines the need of a complete and multidisciplinary approach joining EMC, reliability, device characterization and internal testing skills. Trends, proof of evidence and internal testing approach are described in order to emphasize the need of device aging consideration in robustness studies.