The Impact of Burn-In on IC Reliability

In today's highly competitive electronic equipment market, one of the key issues facing equipment manufacturers is whether or not to burn-in integrated circuits. This decision has both reliability and financial implications and may well affect end user satisfaction and repeat business.

Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to the question of burn-in. To help develop guidelines for equipment manufacturers to use, 1982-1984 Tl reliability data has been analyzed to provide failure rate improvement factors for burn-in. Using this data, an approach is developed to help the equipment manufacturer make a decision regarding the cost effectiveness of component burn-in.