Miniature environmental chambers for temperature humidity bias testing of microelectronics.

Abstract

Environmental chambers are commonly used for reliability testing of microelectronics and other products and materials. These chambers are large, expensive, and limit electrical connectivity to devices under test. In this paper, we present a collection of ten small, low-cost environmental chambers, with humidity control based on mixtures of water and glycerol placed inside the chambers. We demonstrate relative humidities from 44% to 90%, at temperatures from 30 to 85 °C, enabling industry-standard testing at 85% humidity and 85 °C. The division of samples between ten separate chambers allows different conditions to be applied to each sample, in order to quickly characterize the effects of the environment on device reliability, enabling extrapolation to estimate lifetimes in working conditions.