Instructor: Christopher Henderson

Register for Upcoming Courses

To register online via credit card, please click the date of interest.

If you prefer to pay by purchase order or check, please fax the printable registration form for public courses to (505) 858-9813. If you can't make the above course dates or locations, click here to request a date and/or location for this course. For dates and locations in SE Asia, please contact KS Chuah at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Refund Policy: If a course is canceled, refunds are limited to course registration fees. Registration within 21 days of the course is subject to $100 surcharge.

Course Overview

Your company needs competent engineers and scientists to solve reliability problems. Semitracks' 3-day Semiconductor Reliability training course offers detailed instruction on how to determine what failure mechanisms might occur, test for them, develop models for them, and eliminate them from the product.

What You'll Learn

Click here to view a full, printable course outline.

1. Overview of Reliability and Statistics. Participants learn the fundamentals of statistics, sample sizes, distributions, and their parameters.
2. Failure Mechanisms. Participants learn the nature and manifestation of a variety of failure mechanisms that can occur at both the die and package levels. These include time-dependent dielectric breakdown, hot carrier degradation, electromigration, stress-induced voiding, moisture, corrosion, contamination, thermomechanical effects, etc.
3. Test Structures. Participants learn how test structures can be designed to test for a particular failure mechanism.
4. Test Strategies. Participants learn the basics of testing test structures, conducting design screening tests, and performing burn-in testing effectively.

Target Audience

This course is designed for every manager, engineer, and technician concerned with reliability in the semiconductor field, using semiconductor components, or supplying tools to the industry.

Course Objectives

1. The seminar will provide participants with an in-depth understanding of the failure mechanisms, test structures, equipment, and testing methods used to achieve today’s high reliability components.
2. Participants will be able to gather data, determine the best way to plot data, and make inferences from that data.
3. The seminar will identify and explain how major failure mechanisms are observed, modeled, and eliminated.
4. The seminar offers a variety of video demonstrations of analysis techniques, so the participants can get an understanding of the types of results they might expect to see with their equipment.
5. Participants will be able to identify basic test structures and how they are used to help quantify reliability on semiconductor devices.
6. Participants will be able to knowledgeably implement screens that are appropriate to assure the reliability of a component.
7. Participants will be able to identify appropriate tools to purchase when starting or expanding a laboratory.

What Makes Ours Different?

Our instructors are internationally recognized experts. Our instructors have years of current and relevant experience in their fields. They're focused on answering your questions and teaching you what you need to know.

Our analysis instructional videos help you visualize the process. Semiconductor reliability analysis is a visual discipline. The ability to identify nuances and subtleties in images is critical to locating and understanding defects. Many tools output video images that must be interpreted by analysts. Our videos allow you to directly compare material you'll learn with your actual analysis work.

View sample Semiconductor Reliability slides and see for yourself.

Instructor Profile

Christopher Henderson, President of Semitracks

Christopher Henderson received his B.S. in Physics from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and his M.S.E.E. from the University of New Mexico. Chris is the President and one of the founders of Semitracks Inc., a United States-based company that provides education and semiconductor training to the electronics industry.

From 1988 to 2004, Chris worked at Sandia National Laboratories, where he was a Principal Member of Technical Staff in the Failure Analysis Department and Microsystems Partnerships Department. His job responsibilities have included failure and yield analysis of components fabricated at Sandia’s Microelectronics Development Laboratory, research into the electrical behavior of defects, and consulting on microelectronics issues for the DoD. He has published over 20 papers at various conferences in semiconductor processing, reliability, failure analysis, and test. He has received two R&D 100 awards and two best paper awards. Prior to working at Sandia, Chris worked for Honeywell, BF Goodrich Aerospace, and Intel. Chris is a member of IEEE and EDFAS (the Electron Device Failure Analysis Society).

At Semitracks, Chris teaches courses on failure and yield analysis, semiconductor reliability, and other aspects of semiconductor technology.

Course Locations

San Jose
Regus Business Center (5th Floor)
2033 Gateway Place
San Jose, CA 95110

Munich
Landsberger Strasse 155
80687 Munich
Germany
Main telephone: +49 (0) 89 / 5 79 59 -0

For more information about the location for the Munich course, click here.