When your automobile breaks down, you are taking it to the mechanic. When a pc chip fails, engineers go to the failure evaluation staff. It’s their job to diagnose what went wrong and work to verify it doesn’t sooner or later.
The International Symposium on the Physical and Failure analysis of Integrated Circuits (IPFA) is a yearly convention in Asia attended by failure evaluation engineers. The gathering is generally technical, however there’s additionally a enjoyable half: The Art of Failure Analysis contest.
“It’s all about creativity and powerful creativeness,” says Willie Yeoh, chair of the Artwork of Failure Evaluation contest this 12 months. Anybody within the failure evaluation group can submit a picture taken throughout their on a regular basis work that features one thing shocking or surprising, like a melted little bit of silicon that appears like a dinosaur. Ten photographs are chosen by the convention committee as essentially the most fascinating, after which convention attendees vote on their favourite amongst these.
We’ve gathered a set of photographs from the 2022 and 2024 Artwork of Failure Evaluation contests (it didn’t run in 2023). Which one would you vote for?
Ballerina Beneath The Microscope
John Saputil/Analog Gadgets
Engineers at Analog Gadgets within the Philippines had been looking for the presence of overseas supplies on a failed gadget utilizing a scanning electron microscope. They definitely discovered these out-of-place supplies on this chip, showing within the form of a dancer mid-spin.
Excessive Voltage Horse
Mick Johnix Yu/Analog Gadgets
Mick Johnix Yu at Analog Gadgets was investigating how a battery administration system failed. It had suffered from ”electrical overstress” injury, which is when a present or voltage is just too excessive, inflicting thermal injury. Yu thought this injury seemed like a black horse.
A Window Into Silicon
KC Chng/AMD
The Monster Blob
Marilou Regodon/Microchips
This swirling monster with giant eyes appeared when testing an built-in circuit package deal used to attach silicon dies to a printed circuit board. Marilou Regodon, the engineer from Microchip Know-how that took the picture, referred to as it a “terrifying twist in your nightmare” in her submission to the convention.
The Chick Has Risen
John Roland Dean/Microchip Know-how Operations Corp.
This newly hatched chick rising from the depths of surrounding silicon appeared to John Roland Dean of Microchip Know-how. It was brought on by {an electrical} overstress that fused polycrystalline supplies collectively.
Electrical Labyrinth
Lan Yin Lee/AMD
Lan Yin Lee at AMD in Singapore noticed this maze on a die construction after eradicating an insulating protecting layer. The partitions of the maze, captured with a scanning electron microscope, are solely micrometers (one-millionth of a meter) lengthy.
It’s Watching You
Herminso Villarraga Gómez/Zeiss
Stare lengthy sufficient at this electromagnetic solenoid and it’d begin to stare again. Do you see a ghost, a canine, or one thing else? “It’s important to put in slightly little bit of creativeness,” says Herminso Villarraga Gómez, who took the photograph as he carried out meeting evaluation on this half.
Injury Taking Root
Left: Tsang Yat Fung/A*STAR; Proper: iStock
Failure evaluation engineers at Singapore’s Company for Science, Know-how, and Analysis (A*STAR) noticed the roots of a ginseng plant of their investigations.
The Cranium Masks
IPFA
This micrometer lengthy bulge seems like a creepy masks if considered on the proper angle.
Sunflower
MA-tek
These patterns within the floor of a silicon wafer reminded its discoverer of a discipline of sunflowers.
Lips
IPFA
If these lips might converse, maybe they’d tell us why their gadget broke and save the failure evaluation staff some work.
Flowering Sea Anemone
MA-tek
This bloom might be a sea anemone, because the submitting staff at MA-tek, in Taiwan, thought. We thought it may be a flower or porcupine. What do you see?
