Accelerated Reliability Evaluation of Trimetal Integrated Circuit Chips in Plastic Packages

Accelerated step-stress and constant-stress reliability tests have been performed on trimetal MOS and bipolar integrated circuit chips beam-tape bonded in both plastic and hermetic packages. Wire bonded units of like construction were also included for control purposes. The work is being performed in three phases. Phase I, already completed, was a study of the feasibility of hermetic gold metallized chips, beam-tape bonding, and plastic packaging being married into one low-cost high-reliability package. Phase II of the program, currently in progress, is being conducted to develop activation energy(s) for the chip-package system. During the first two phases two reliability problems were discovered and resolved. Phase III of the program, yet to be accomplished, will be a complete reliability assessment of the high-reliability low-cost system.