Abstract: We are developing methods to assess the viability of second order effects (2OE) testing methods to improve the screening of microelectronic components for counterfeits and reliability escapes. 2OE are characteristics that are secondary to those for which components were designed and reflect details of physical implementation (“how it is made”); for example, 2OE may measure energy absorbed, reflected, or emitted under various test conditions. The breadth of 2OE methods spans very high dimensional feature spaces, but the detectability of specific types of “problems” is often limited to a much smaller range of measurable features and may be limited by signal/noise related to the “scale of the problem”, the data collection method and equipment choices, and the methods of analysis. This talk will highlight findings from our research using a prototype FPGA-based 2OE test-bed, using hardware Trojans as a case problem for studying how methods optimization and detectability limits can be quantitatively assessed.

Bio: Dr. Brendan Foran is a Senior Scientist in the Electronics and Photonics Laboratory at The Aerospace Corporation where he has conducted research over the past 14 years to assess performance and reliability of microelectronics and optoelectronics components for a broad range of applications. Dr. Foran is Co-Chair of the Electronic Device Failure Analysis Society’s Failure Analysis Future Technologies Roadmap Council and has organized symposia related to FA and device characterization with the Microanalysis Society, The Microscopy Society of America and at Aerospace’s MRQW. Prior to Aerospace, Dr. Foran led SEMATECH’s Process Characterization Laboratory for electron microscopy and focused ion beam teams for about ten years. Dr. Foran’s Ph.D. work at the University of Michigan focused on structure-property relationships in low-dimensional semiconductors employing semi-empirical band-structure calculations and X-ray scattering.