Peter,

After you've done the preliminary x-ray looksee .. curve tracing is
another very useful, first pass, non-destructive way to gain some
insight as to what's going on with a part. It won't necessarily tell you
what the root cause of the failure is, but the waveforms displayed by
tracing pin-pin, pin-rail, pin-gnd, etc., will reflect any opens,
shorts, leakages and other unusual conditions in the device. This is all
helpful information in the FA process. 

One drawback is that a curve tracer will see everything else in the
circuitry that is on the same net as the pins you're interested in,
which can add a good bit of confusion to the interpretation of the
waveforms. In an ideal situation, the part is powered up (VCC-GND), and
your pins are isolated from the outside world. It can be performed on
the board, but it requires careful attention to C/T stimulus voltage,
currents, and technique. It's a snap for parts already removed from the
board. 

It is often helpful to perform the same curve trace analysis on a known
good part so you have those waveforms to compare against those of your
failed part. If you have multiple vendors for this part, stay with the
same vendor and die rev. for the comparison.

Any outside lab will have a curve tracer.  

Bruce Tostevin
Benchmark Electronics
Hudson, NH

-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Lee
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 1:58 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [TN] Component Failure analysis

Technet,

What are possible failure analysis (destructive or non-destructive and
what
are the pro/cons) I could conduct on the component level (of an IC) to
determine failure mode/root cause?

We are measuring internal shorts between leads on a SOIC after
soldering.
Troubleshooting has pointed towards that failure is component (not
soldering
process) related. I am looking for an independent lab that can offer
such
service.


Rgds,
Peter

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