The solid state component industry manufactures devices that are used in a wide range
of applications. Consequently, the accelerated stress portion of the qualification
regimen used to assess the reliability performance of these devices should be
customized to match the range of end use applications, based upon knowledge of the
customer’s end use application conditions, environment, life time requirements,
potential failure mechanisms, and associated failure models. The practice of using
prescribed reliability stress test conditions, durations, sample sizes, and acceptance
criteria may be inappropriate, especially with the ever-evolving applications and material
sets found in the solid state component industry. The historically prescribed stress tests
may either produce false failures or not accelerate valid failure mechanisms because
the stress conditions do not correlate appropriately to the actual use environment.