FEA - Finite Element Analysis - Page 2 of 2: Applications in the Semiconductor Industry

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Finite Element Analysis (FEA) - Page 2 of 2

Still, companies who can afford to set up FEA capability should do so, because the system cost will be negligible compared to failures that may arise from inadequate design or modeling capability. Prevention of costly over-designs will also help pay for the FEA system.

Figure 2. 3-D FEA plots showing how a beam of a micromachined

electromechanical system (MEMS) would behave under different excitation

frequency levels; source: www.algor.com

FEA is used extensively in the semiconductor industry. 'Real-life' examples of FEA applications in the industry include but are not limited to the following:

- continuous improvement of IC package designs and material sets;

- stress analysis of adhesive bonding and design of bonded joints;

- fracture mechanics and fatigue analysis of adhesive bonds;

- thermal stress and deformation analysis of solder joints;

- fracture mechanics of solder joints for solder joint reliability studies;

- thermo-mechanical stress analysis of interfaces within a package;

- comparative analyses between flip-chip and wirebonded package configurations;

- thermal, mechanical, and electrical modeling for various leadframe designs and materials;

- simulations of wirebond and die attach fatigue failures;

- selection of the correct wire diameter, arrangement and profile given the current loads;

- reduction of wafer backside waviness through soft pad wafer backgrinding;

- modeling of the vibration responses of beams in micro-machined silicon accelrometers; etc.

Figure 3. An FEA contour plot of the electric field surrounding

a TIP field emitter; source: www.ansys.com

See Also: IC Packaging

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