The EMPF training course “Failure Analysis of Electronic Assemblies” provides a general overview for investigative work on failed electronics assemblies and devices. The course spans three days and includes lecture, case study discussions, lab sessions, and demonstrations of on-site equipment and instrumentation. Students are welcome to bring samples to be analyzed during the lab and demo portions of the course. In addition, students can benefit by sharing and discussing their own failure analysis experience faced at their job. This course combines both classroom lecture material, as well as hands-on experience in the analytical wet lab and microscopy lab. Students from a wide background of both government and private industries have attended this training course. They have included quality engineers, manufacturing engineers, technicians, and managers who wanted to broaden their understanding of failure analysis and learn more about specific techniques or methodologies.

The following topics will be covered in the morning lectures:

• Failure Analysis Methodology
  
• Bare Board Defects
  
• Failure Modes of Advanced Packages
  
• Component Failures
  
• Wire Bond Pull and Ball Shear Testing
  
• Cleanliness Testing, Solderability Testing, and Sequential Electrochemical Reduction Analysis (SERA)
  
• Spectroscopy Techniques
  
• Microsectioning and X-Ray Analysis
  
• Microscopy- High and Low Magnifications
  
• Reliability Testing and Analysis
  
• Integrated Circuit Failure Analysis, Delidding and Decapsulation

In the lab sessions, students will gain practical experience by working on failure analysis of samples using all the available equipment.

• Wire Bond Pull Tester, Ball Shear Tester
  
• Optical Microscopy, Metallograph, Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS)
  
• Ion Chromatograph (IC), Ionograph, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), UV-Vis Spectroscopy
  
• X-Ray Inspection, Optical Inspection, X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF)
  
• Wetting Balance, Decapsulation Techniques, Sequential Electrochemical Reduction Analysis (SERA)
  
• Manual and Automatic Grinder/Polisher, Integrated Circuit Grinder/Polisher

Catastrophic failures from environmental testing will often be investigated by failure analysis for root cause following standards specified by ASTM, JEDEC, IPC, and MIL-STD. A tour of the EMPF facilities on the manufacturing floor will show the environmental test equipment commonly used for reliability testing.

• Salt Fog Chamber
  
• Steam Ager
  
• Thermal Humidity Chamber
  
• Thermal Cycling Chambers
  
• Vibration Table
  
• Highly Accelerated Stress Test (HAST) Chamber

Towards the end of this class, the students will look at case studies based on real-life failures experienced by vendors. The instructor will discuss the proper technique and demonstrate the methodology for determining root cause of failure.

The EMPF offers the “Failure Analysis of Electronic Assemblies” training course several times during the year. Please check the dates on the schedule at the end of this newsletter. For registration information, please contact the Registrar at 610.362.1295 or email registrar@empf.org.