Abstract
Degradation is seemingly fundamental to all things in nature. Often this is described as one of the consequences of the Second Law of Thermodynamics—entropy (disorder) of isolated systems will tend to increase with time. The evidence for degradation is apparently everywhere in nature. A fresh coating of paint on a house will eventually crack and peel. The finish on a new automobile will oxidize with time. The tight tolerances associated with finely meshed gears will deteriorate with time. The critical parameters associated with precision semiconductor devices (threshold voltages, drive currents, interconnect resistances, capacitor leakage, etc.) will degrade with time. In order to understand the useful lifetime of the device, it is important to be able to model how critically important material/device parameters degrade with time.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Regardless of how carefully crafted a material/device is at time zero, the material/device will degrade with time.
- 2.
Note that A 0 must have the units of reciprocal-time to the mth power.
- 3.
The term device is very general: any apparatus that serves some useful purpose.
- 4.
If significant degradation (but not failure) started in the warranty period, does one have a claim? Sometimes, it can be very important to be able to identify the onset of degradation.
- 5.
Note that even though the degradation started at 10.5 months, the degradation at 12 months is so small that it went undetected by the measuring instrument.
- 6.
An example of competing mechanism comes from the joining/bonding of dissimilar materials. During the bonding of dissimilar metals at high temperatures, interdiffusion of the two materials is usually required in order to establish good bonding. Initially, this interdiffusion of materials will cause an increase in bonding strength. However, often during the later stages of interdiffusion, the bond strength can start to weaken due to Kirkendall voiding.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McPherson, J.W. (2013). Materials and Device Degradation . In: Reliability Physics and Engineering. Springer, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00122-7_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00122-7_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-00121-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-00122-7
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)