During a product's development lifecycle, accelerated life testing (ALT) will help find weaknesses early and reduce financial risk. As the product development lifecycle charges ahead, the investment risk of a failure increases at pace. Early in the development stage of new technology, engineers must determine if the theoretical idea for a device will work in the physical world.
Stress-Testing For Technology and Design Characterization
The Accelerated Life Testing (ALT) method usually takes the form of stressing the device with heat or elevated-bias conditions while monitoring for signs of degradation. These stages are classified as technology characterization and design characterization.
By subjecting the devices to stress combined with down-point-characterization tests, engineers can glean useful data about exactly how a device starts exhibiting signs of a failure mode. This information is invaluable early in the developmental period to determine any needed changes to design before full-scale production begins.
The investment in the product is relatively low at this point. So fine-tuning the process now will pay dividends in the long run.
Minimize Risk with Application-Specific Product Testing
Before a company releases the device to the market, it must determine if the product will perform as expected in the intended market.
The product qualification phase subjects the product to a series of tests to prove it's suited to the user's application. At this point, hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone into development, and the results of this testing serve as permission to play for the target application.
All of these testing phases are put in place as checkmarks so that when a product is released into the field, you can be confident you've done everything possible to avoid astronomically expensive field failures. Accel-RF is the world's choice for providing turnkey instruments for measuring accelerated aging performance on RF semiconductor device technologies.
Contact us to learn more about how we can add security to your testing and production strategies, wherever they take you.
