2008 Photo Contest Winners

Congratulations to the 2008 winners!
 Category I: Color Images
1st Place:

Hamid Kashani
COM DEV International, Ltd., Cambridge, Ontario

This photo is taken from a gold plated via hole of an alumina PCB. The significance of the photo is to indicate that the cracks on gold plating are initiated from the alumina substrate. Photo is taken by focusing
through an extended depth of field of 10 mils to follow the cracks from cross-sectioned via.

2nd Place:

Carl Nail

National Semiconductor, Santa Clara, California
Two pads shorted due to copper dendritic growth
caused by acid residue from PCB manufacturing
process. Board was back-ground and viewed from the
back through the remaining board resin. Darkfield
illumination, 200x.
3rd Place: 


Ken Turner

Hi-Rel Laboratories, Spokane, Washington

Copper dendrites in a FET resulting from the corrosion of the header material.

 Category II: Black and White Images

1st Place:

Rafael Huerta

National Semiconductor, Santa Clara, California

Roots of ESD. This is ESD damage/short between Emitter/Collector regions on a device. Silicon has migrated from an emitter region shorting out to a collector region.

2nd Place: 

Michael Drake

Intel Corporation, Chandler, Arizona

SEM image of “sea star” corrosion formations on
motherboard socket j-lead that caused contact high
resistance/open failure.

3rd Place:

Jérôme Pons and Nathan Folsom

Nanolab Technologies, San Jose, California

The image represents a defect at poly level.
 Category III: False Color Images

1st Place:

Dr. Natasha Erdman and Vern Robertson

JEOL USA, Peabody, Massachusetts

An EBSD (Electron Backscatter Diffraction) map of a wire bond, showing grain size and crystallographic grain orientation. The colors represent the crystals’ relative
position in 3D space with respect to one another in an x, y,z (H,K,L) coordinate system. The cross section of the
sample was prepared with the JEOL CP ion polisher.

2nd Place:

Jim Colvin

FA Instruments, San Jose, California

Combinational analysis using OBIC/SIFT laser
scan of a poly resistor at 654nm. No signal
was found in this area using TIVA/OBIRCH
style techniques. INSB thermal is shown
in the upper right inset image identifying the
leakage source.

3rd Place:

Roger Yacobucci

LSI Corp., Fort Collins, Colorado

Laser scanning microscope image of damage located between the top metal layers of the seal ring and two input buffers. The flip chip device was de-processed while still attached to the package substrate and the view is from the backside of a mechanically thinned device.