As others have noted this is not a unique issue.  But as mentioned by others
this is a very uncommon problem in properly fabricated transfer molded IC
packages.  About the only new consideration to pop up in the past year or
two is the use of bromine-free mold compounds that used red phosphorous as
the flame retardant.  This noncrystalline form of phosphorous has been
associated with device failures about a year or two ago, and resulted in
major litigation between Fujitsu and Cirrus Logic due to the use of this
type of mold compound for Cirrus die used in Fujitsu hard drives.  The
product was assembled by Amkor using mold compound from Sumitomo.  Most have
stopped using this type of mold compound by now, but you can still purchase
compounds containing the red-P, some with very low levels of red-P.  But
quite a bit of product was made by multiple suppliers before this issue
surfaced and a lot of these die are likely to be resident on assembled
system boards, or even in distributor inventories.  Perhaps this is a factor
in your case.

Leo

------------------------------------
Leo M. Higgins III, Ph.D.
ASAT Inc.
Central Region Mgr. / Director of Sales
[log in to unmask]
3755 Capital of Texas Hwy-So
Suite 100
Austin, TX     USA     78726
tel: 512-383-4593
fax: 512-383-1590
mobile: 512-423-2002
------------------------------------


-----Original Message-----
From: Bogert [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 4:41 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [TN] Integrated Circuit Internal Bond Wire Failures - Seeking
Information Concerning


January 21, 2004

Folks, although this question may not be appropriate for this forum, does
anyone out there have any information or technical data regarding internal
bond-wire failures in non-hermetic integrated circuits (IC).  It is my
understanding that this is a recently uncovered problem where the internal
bonds in IC''s are failing open due to presence of molecular moisture in the
IC, or by outside contamination sources (e.g.
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copper).

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