Process · Reliability & Quality
Product qualification
The planned set of stress tests and evaluations showing that a part, built on its production process and package, will be reliable in its intended use. It follows a qualification standard for the market, such as JEDEC or AEC-Q100, and is repeated in part when the design, process, package or site changes.
- Also known as
- Reliability qualification, Device qualification, Requalification, Requal
- Type
- Process
- Domain
- Reliability & Quality, Qualification testing
Overview
Product qualification is the planned set of stress tests and checks that shows a chip, made on its production process and in its production package, will survive and work reliably in its intended market. Automotive parts are commonly qualified to the Automotive Electronics Council's AEC-Q100, while other markets follow their own reliability standards or customer requirements. A qualified part can be released for production, and later changes to it trigger partial requalification.
How it works
Qualification groups its tests by what they stress. AEC-Q100 is a useful example because the document is freely published: it has groups for accelerated environmental stress (humidity, temperature cycling, high-temperature storage), accelerated lifetime simulation (high temperature operating life, or HTOL, and early life failure rate), package assembly integrity, die fabrication reliability, electrical verification such as ESD and latch-up, defect screening, and cavity package integrity.
Each test sets a sample size, a number of lots and a pass criterion. For HTOL, AEC-Q100 asks for 77 parts from each of three lots with zero failures, run for 1,000 hours at 125 °C ambient for a grade 1 part. Grades 0 to 3 set the ambient operating range a part is qualified for, from minus 40 °C up to 150 °C for grade 0 and up to 85 °C for grade 3.
Not every part needs every test from scratch. Data from parts in the same qualification family, built on the same process and package, can be reused as generic data. When the design, process, materials or manufacturing site changes, the supplier assesses which tests must be repeated.
Examples
- An automotive microcontroller run through the full AEC-Q100 test flow before it can be offered as automotive grade.
- HTOL boards in ovens running hundreds of parts for 1,000 hours, with electrical tests before and after.
- A move to a second assembly site, where the package-related tests are repeated but the die-level data is reused.
- A memory device that also runs the AEC-Q100-005 endurance and data retention tests for non-volatile memory.
- A qualification report listing each test, sample size, lots and results, sent to customers as part of the release package.
Why it matters
Without qualification data a customer, especially an automotive or industrial one, will not design a part in. Reliability and qualification engineers plan and run the tests, product and package engineers supply the material, and quality teams compile the evidence for customers. Qualification is also on the critical path: a failure late in the programme can mean a redesign or a process fix and months of delay.
Related terms
Part of the Reliability & Quality glossary, with every term in the topic and the lifecycles, tools and standards that use them.
Where it appears on the Hub
Used on 60 pages of the Hub. In each group, the pages that mention it most come first.
Lifecycle stages and gates
- Cost-Down Shrinks & Derivatives (Memory lifecycle)
- Updates & Requalification (AI-assisted flow lifecycle)
- Change & Requalification (APQP lifecycle)
- Reliability Qualification (Photonics lifecycle)
- Requalification approval (AI-assisted flow lifecycle)
- Change requalified and approved (APQP lifecycle)
- and 34 more
Roles
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Last reviewed . Written by The Semiconductor Hub editorial team. The full glossary