Electrical Overstress Prevention & Test Best Practices

This talk briefly covers some causes and effects of EOS. Specifically, those that are process induced and test program induced. Three types of process induced failure are briefly highlighted, namely gate oxide rupture, damaged metal and junction damage. The effect of ESD though prevalent, is not discussed. The focus of the presentation is the elimination of voltage spikes in testing through proper programming and hardware design. As such, best practices commonly adopted by test engineers are included for sharing and discussion.