Virtual qualification methodologies for microelectronic packaging

拟议研究项目的主要目标是展示一个完整的虚拟资格(VQ)平台，用于解决IBM(工业合作伙伴)在开发和制造先进微电子部件过程中遇到的复杂工程问题。这里的术语“虚拟鉴定”具体指的是对所有相关的失效机制和制造缺陷进行数值模拟以计算新技术、工艺或设计的失效概率的过程。拟议研究中最重要的新颖性因素是要开发的VQ过程的完整性，即它具有足够的广度和数量证明的可信度，可供工业伙伴定期使用，以高效的VQ取代昂贵的基于硬件的新技术实验验证。拟议的研究项目将开发在IBM实施VQ的新方法，以及用于模拟微电子组件上的热和机械负载的完整高级数值模型库。该项目的成功将以我们工业合作伙伴的竞争力增长来衡量，例如，通过缩短上市时间或降低开发成本来衡量。虽然一些VQ工具将专门为IBM制造的微电子部件开发，但本研究项目中创建的大多数方法和软件将广泛适用于使用复杂的数值模拟来验证关键设计选择的其他领域。

The principal objective of the proposed research project is to demonstrate a complete virtual qualification (VQ) platform applied to the complex engineering problems encountered during the development and manufacturing of advanced microelectronic components at IBM (the industrial partner). The term "virtual qualification" here specifically means the process by which all relevant failure mechanisms and manufacturing defects are simulated numerically, in order to compute a probability of failure for a new technology, process or design. The most important element of novelty in the proposed research is the completeness of the VQ process to be developed, in the sense that it has sufficient breadth and quantitatively demonstrated credibility to be used on a regular basis by the industrial partner to replace expensive hardware-based experimental validations of new technologies by highly-efficient VQ. The proposed research project will develop both the new methodologies to implement VQ at IBM, as well as the full library of advanced numerical models used to simulate the thermal and mechanical loads on microelectronic components. The success of the project will be measured in terms of gains in competitiveness for our industrial partner, for instance in terms of reduced time-to-market or lower development costs. While some of the VQ tools will be developed specifically for the microelectronic components built by IBM, most of the methodologies and software to be created in this research project will be broadly applicable to other fields where complex numerical simulations are used to validate critical design choices.