Applications and Comparison of Failure Analysis Methods

As the importance of quality insurance and reliability is increasing electronic manufacturers apply more and more failure detection and analysis methods in and off the production line. The aim of this paper is to describe and compare the applicability of several up-to-date failure analysis methods. The discussed techniques are X-ray microstructure analysis, SAM (scanning acoustic microscopy), SEM (scanning electron microscopy) combined with EDS (energy dispersive spectroscopy) analysis, optical inspection, microsectioning. The analysis methods can be grouped not only by their destructiveness and whether they are in or off-line but also by the failure and defect types that can be detected by them. This paper gives an overview of the detectable failures and shows typical applications of the analysis methods through recent case studies.