APEI has access to an array of failure analysis equipment. In house capabilities include an environmental lab with several furnaces for long term temperature exposure testing and a Keyence VHX-600 high resolution (54 megapixels) digital microscope used for visual inspection up to 1000X magnification. Through its partnerships with the University of Arkansas’s High Density Electronics Center (HiDEC), Materials and Manufacturing Research Laboratories (MMRL) , and Arkansas Analytical Laboratory, APEI has access to scanning acoustic microscopes used for non destructive analysis, sectioning and polishing equipment used for metallography, scanning electron microscopes used for visual inspection up to 100,000X magnification, electron dispersion spectroscopy (EDX) for elemental analysis, and x-ray diffraction used for microstructure analysis. This equipment allows APEI to identify problems such as intermetallic growth, voids in solder under devices, metal layer delamination, and contamination introduced during processing.

Left: SAM of die attach voiding on a thyristor. Right: 3D image capture from Keyence microscope.

SEM of Ultrasonic 3-mil gold bonds before and after thermal cycling from -55 °C to 300 °C

Cross section of packaged SiC device