Investigation of Metalization Failures of Glass Sealed Ceramic Dual Inline Integrated Circuits

A cause of field failures in CERDIP integrated circuits is shown to be due to excessive moisture, excessive ionic contamination and high negative potentials on the die surface which resulted in electrolytic corrosion of aluminum. The feasibility of using a one week low temperature bias aging to detect this failure mode in suspect lots is discussed. Additionally, a model is presented to account for a source of the ionic contamination on particular devices.