Study of power durability measurement of RF SAW devices for IEC standardization

This paper describes the trial of time-to-failure (TTF) estimation of RF SAW devices for IEC standardization. An on-wafer measurement system was constructed so as to perform the acceleration test in terms of applied power and/or chip temperature. The ladder type SAW filters in the 2GHz range fabricated on a 42°YX-LiTaO₃ wafer were used as the DUT, and their TTFs were measured. The experiments showed that the acceleration by temperature and applied power obeys the Eyring´s model well. It was also demonstrated that the chip temperature can be estimated form the cutoff frequency of the BAW radiation, which is identified easily from the VNA data. This technique seems quite feasible to monitor chip temperature of packaged RF SAW devices during the TTF measurement because no modification is necessary for the SAW device design.