Publications

A Modeling Approach for Predicting the Effect of Corrosion on Electrical-Circuit Reliability

Braithwaite, J.W.; Braithwaite, J.W.; Sorensen, Neil R.; Robinson, David G.; Chen, Ken S.; Bogdan, Carolyn W.

An analytical capability is being developed that can be used to predict the effect of corrosion on the performance of electrical circuits and systems. The availability of this ''toolset'' will dramatically improve our ability to influence device and circuit design, address and remediate field occurrences, and determine real limits for circuit service life. In pursuit of this objective, we have defined and adopted an iterative, statistical-based, top-down approach that will permit very formidable and real obstacles related to both the development and use of the toolset to be resolved as effectively as possible. An important component of this approach is the direct incorporation of expert opinion. Some of the complicating factors to be addressed involve the code/model complexity, the existence of large number of possible degradation processes, and an incompatibility between the length scales associated with device dimensions and the corrosion processes. Two of the key aspects of the desired predictive toolset are (1) a direct linkage of an electrical-system performance model with mechanistic-based, deterministic corrosion models, and (2) the explicit incorporation of a computational framework to quantify the effects of non-deterministic parameters (uncertainty). The selected approach and key elements of the toolset are first described in this paper. These descriptions are followed by some examples of how this toolset development process is being implemented.