0

If you overheat a chip, you can melt the microwires attaching the wafer to the package. When this happens, can the melted microwires cause shorts between the pins of the chip, inside the package of the chip? The result of this would be short circuits even though the circuit externally appears to have none.

Tom
  • 59
  • 6
  • 1
    You don't even need to melt the microwires. Silicon generally fails short and can do so with no visible signs of damage. – DKNguyen Oct 04 '19 at 18:43
  • 1
    To add to @DKNguyen point. Semiconductor materials are still reasonably good conductors. The deposited insulation (sio2) is rather thin, and when it comes to transistors, gate/base regions are also generally very thin, so with excess heat they anneal or breakthrough and then proceed to conduct. Often it is actually the bond wire melting that can disrupt the short . – crasic Oct 04 '19 at 20:54

1 Answers1

1

you can melt the microwires attaching the wafer to the package

Sure but if that is happening, you're using the chip in the wrong way. The bondingwires shouldn't get that hot. Solve it by using more in parallel (to more package pins) and/or use thicker bondwires.

When this happens, can the melted microwires cause shorts between the pins of the chip

No, that should not happen as the bondwires aren't "floating in air" there is material (usually plastic or epoxy) in between the wires.

The scenario you describe isn't the normal usage scenario for an IC, you're purposely damaging it.

Bimpelrekkie
  • 80,139
  • 2
  • 93
  • 183
  • I imagine at least some of the plastic around the bondwires would probably melt too, if the bondwire melts. – Hearth Oct 04 '19 at 21:36