2007 Advanced Materials/Failure Analysis (AMFA) Workshop Meets in Phoenix This April.

PHOENIX -- The Advanced Materials/Failure Analysis (AMFA) Workshop, which provides a forum for the discussion of current issues and trends in the microelectronics industry with leading experts, will meet April 20, 2007, at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix at Civic Plaza in Phoenix, Ariz.

This year's workshop follows the 2007 International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS), also taking place at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix, April 15 through April 19.

Registration fees are $150 for IEEE or EDFAS members and $200 for non-members. Registration may be done online at www.amfaworkshop.org, onsite during the 2007 IRPS, or at the AMFA Workshop. Registration for the AMFA Workshop includes a CD-ROM of the presented materials, lunch and morning/afternoon breaks. The AMFA Workshop is co-sponsored by the IEEE Reliability Society and the Electronic Device Failure Analysis Society.

AMFA's mission is to serve the interests of failure analysis and materials characterization professionals by providing a forum for the presentation and active discussion of timely and pertinent technological issues and trends and to promote the development of new capabilities that fill critical gaps in emerging technologies. Unlike traditional conferences that often restrict audience participation, AMFA Workshops provide only top quality invited speakers on leading edge topics in a format where audience participation is expected and strongly encouraged.

AMFA programs and speakers this year will include:

FA Role: Dynamic Driver or Passive Passenger?: Rich Blish, Spansion; Efrat Raz, Gemtech: The FA team is expected to continue to support advanced technology and production cost cutting without taking an active role in technology roadmaps, design reviews, production assessment, and post analysis recovery plans with a limited budget. Blish and Raz propose FA teams become a technical partner as well by developing interactive communication, demanding data and being a follow up partner, and communicating both technically and in dollar terms.

Leveraging Federal Funding for Characterization Tools: Bruce Gnade, University of Texas, Dallas: Development cycles of five to seven years and millions of dollars of non-refundable engineering costs are typical. The problem is exacerbated by small worldwide sales and the fact that typically the tools are being developed by small, venture capital firms whose budgets are strained. This presentation addresses funding schemes to develop sophisticated, small volume analytical tools for the semiconductor industry, including an introduction based on the actual development costs and resources necessary to bring x-ray tomography to the marketplace and the path forward to avoid some of the obvious limitations of that process.

Advances in Terahertz Imaging: Hamid Tizhoosh, University of Waterloo: Terahertz radiation includes waves between 300 GHz to 10 THz (in some works up to 30 THz). Recent technologies using terahertz radiation have been developed for applications such as medical imaging and surveillance. Terahertz imaging also has applications in nondestructive inspection of IC packages, security-screening systems without harmful radiation (e.g. recognition of explosives and hazardous materials), genetic engineering, pharmaceutical quality control and medical imaging.

Metrology for Emerging Devices and Materials: Eric Vogel, University of Texas, Dallas: Scaling of the Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MOSFET) and its traditional materials has been the basis of the semiconductor industry for nearly 30 years. A wide variety of materials and devices are emerging to extend and replace the traditional MOSFET. Vogel provides an overview of these emerging devices and materials and of the metrology requirements for these technologies.

Atomic Level Ion Source Microscopy: Bill Ward, ALIS Corp.: A novel helium ion microscope has been developed that has advantages over traditional scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) and focused ion beams (FIBs) for many applications. The ALIS scanning ion microscope uses a beam of helium ions as the imaging particles. Ions can be focused into a smaller probe size - less than 1 nm with a properly designed column, and have less sample interaction than electrons. The ALIS microscope can generate higher resolution images with more material contrast so more detail can be seen than even by the most sophisticated scanning electron microscope (SEM).

Materials Characterization Using Ultrafast Lasers: David Cahill, University of Illinois: This presentation describes how the rapid heating of the near surface of metal films by nJ ultrafast optical pulses can be used to generate nanoscale wavelength strain and temperature fields for measurements of the mechanical and thermal properties of thin films and interfaces.

Failure Analysis Year in Review: Christian Boit, Berlin University of Technology: FA innovation trends are measured by IC technology roadmaps. This presentation takes snapshots of the year and introduces major trends, presenting a picture of the dynamics in the different analysis sections metrology, debug/diagnosis on die and package and their respective interactive potential emerges that also anticipates economical aspects of the development.

For general workshop information, visit http://www.amfaworkshop.org/
or contact:

Gay Samuelson
Workshop Chair, AMFA
Technical Consultant
Tel: [phone]
e-mail: [e-mail]


For registration and mailings:

IRPS Publishing Services
P.O. Box 308
Westmoreland, NY 13490 USA
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
e-mail: [e-mail]