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 Exponent’s team of electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, material scientists, and statisticians provide solutions to challenging reliability and availability problems for semiconductors, discrete components, printed circuit boards, and systems that integrate them. The range of our services includes failure analysis, reliability analysis, and accelerated testing. Exponent also provides product development support consisting of design for reliability (DFR) consulting, design for manufacturability (DFM) consulting, product safety review, and supply-chain management support.
Our collective expertise covers a broad range of components used in electronics products, including:
- Integrated circuits: A variety of ICs, including processors, flash memories, SRAM and DRAMs, A/D and D/A converters, motor driver chips, switch mode modulation controller chips, RF circuits, battery management ICs, ASIC, etc. Technologies include CMOS, Bi-polar, Bi-CMOS, GaAs, and SiGe
- Discrete active components: diodes, bi-polar transistors, power MOSFET, Triac, Diac, thyristors, SCR, opto-isolator, and phototransistors
- Discrete passive components: Resistors, capacitors (electrolytic, ceramic, tantalum, film, etc), inductors and chokes, transformers, relays and switches, connectors, cables and wiring
- Rigid (ceramic and polymeric) and flexible printed wiring boards and optimization of supporting structure of different configurations
- Optoelectronics components: LEDs, VCSELs, lasers, diodes, LCDs, touch-screen LCDs (capacitive and resistive), lamps, photovoltaic cells (thin film, single and multi-crystalline silicon, multi-junction), and other solar technology–related components (such as concentrator mirrors, bypass diodes)
- Circuit protection devices: varistors, PTC, TCO, fuses, circuit breakers, GFID
- Sensors and actuators: Reed sensors, accelerometers, RF-ID tags, smart card, MEMS, and other novel devices
- Magnets and motors
- Antennas and mechanical components (latches, clutches, buttons)
- Storage devices such as CD ROM media and hard disk drive components
- Input devices such as keypads, touch pads, and membrane switches
Some of the key component reliability problems that we solve include:
- IC or discrete components: EOS, latch-up and ESD issues, TDDB, noise issues
- Component packaging: delamination, moisture ingression, component moisture sensitivity issues, molding compound reliability, electrochemical migration, bond wire interconnection reliability, under-fill contamination
- Thermal management: thermal interface material (TIM) and heat sink optimization for high-power active devices, fan selection and failure analysis, pump selection and failure analysis, heat sink fouling testing
- Solder joints: fatigue, creep, FEA modeling, and metallurgical analysis
- Passive components: electrolytic capacitor dry-out, ceramic capacitor cracking, film capacitor failure analysis, transformer core overheat, choke failure analysis
- Printed circuit board assembly: contamination and cleanliness issues, plating-related issues (such as Sn wiskers, Ag-S corrosion, ENIG “black pad”), issues related to plated through hole (PTH), propagating circuit board failure root-cause analysis, cold solder, conductive filament formation (CFF or CAF)
- Circuit protection devices failure analysis: MOV thermal runaway, PTC thermal runaway, etc.
- Interconnect failure analysis and reliability: connector and relay contact plating, contact corrosion, contact arcing erosion, hot-plug issues, fretting corrosion
- Optoelectronics: LCD screen cracking, touch-screen Newton rings, LED output degradation, cold cathode fluorescent bulb failure analysis, catastrophic optical destruction(COD), lifetime prediction and analysis
- PV technology: Panel interconnect corrosion and reliability test, inverter failure analysis, panel mechanical and thermal stress test, bypass diode optimization, mirror contamination and corrosion studies
- RoHS and WEEE regulatory issues, including new initiatives such as halogen-free, and reliability concerns of alternative packaging materials
Exponent typically takes the “physics of failure” approach to address our customer’s reliability problems. We first try to identify and understand the failure mechanisms using analytical techniques that include the following:
- Optical microscopy
- Real-time x-ray
- X-ray CT scan
- SEM/EDS
- IR thermography
- Acoustic microscopy
- White light interferometry
- Electrical characterization, micro-probing
- ESD, latch-up testing
- Computer-aided modeling (CAD) such as Finite Element Analysis (FEA)
- Other material analysis techniques such as ion chromatography, GC/MS, FTIR, TOFSIMS, Auger, SIMS, AFM, TEM, XRF, XRD, XPS, impedance spectroscopy
In addition, Exponent can perform standard and customized reliability testing in its facilities in Menlo Park, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, including:
- HALT and HASS, accelerated testing
- Shock and vibration, including drop testing and pyroshock testing
- Fatigue testing
- Corrosion and electrochemical testing
- Separable connector testing
- Mixed-flow gas testing
- Electrical insulation testing
- Over-voltage testing
- Temperature/humidity testing
Finally, Exponent will integrate the knowledge from both analytical studies and reliability testing to help our clients assess and manage the risk of their components and systems. Some of the exercises we conduct at the system level include:
- Root-cause analysis such as Fishbone diagrams
- Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA)
- Reliability block diagrams (RBD)
- Monte Carlo simulations
- Markov models
- Fault-tree analysis (FTA)
- Redundancy analysis
- Statistical analysis (parametric analysis such as Weibull analysis)
- Component derating analysis
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