Predicting ESD Related Reliability Effects

This paper addresses a recent case history at Hewlett-Packard, where the cumulative effect of ESD damage has been observed in actual field failures on an LSI CMOS device. The failure rate of an LSI device accounted for a majority of the assembly line scrap as well as the majority of field returns. It was found that the two measuring points track each other and the line scrap rate can predict the field return rate for this failure mode. It was also found that the failure rate was constant with time for given populations.