2013 International Conference on Quality, Reliability, Risk, Maintenance, and Safety Engineering (QR2MSE)

Failure Analysis of Integrated Detector Dewar

Cryocooler Assembly
Canxiong Lai, Shaohua Yang, Guoguang Lu
Science and Technology on Reliability Physics and Application of Electronic Component Laboratory CEPREI
Guangzhou, China
lcx305@163.com

Abstract—The Integrated Detector Dewar Cryocooler Assembly device which provides a low temperature working platform for
(IDDCA) is a critical component for advanced infrared systems, IRFPA.
and especially in infrared (IR) applications, a high reliability for
(3) Cryocooler: refrigeration equipment used for cooling
the IDDCA is required increasingly. In this paper, we
systematically analyze the failure modes of IDDCA, such as the IRFPA to reach the low working temperature.
interconnect failure, diodes degradation, vacuum failure, spring
fracture, leakage of working medium, mechanical wear and
contamination based on their reliability physics. Generally,
thermal cycles, outgassing, process defects, are the major causes
of these failures. This paper would be helpful for improving the
level in the design and manufacture of IDDCA.

Keywords-IDDCA; Infrared Focal Plane Array (IRFPA);

dewar; cryocooler; reliability; failure mode

I. INTRODUCTION
Figure 1. Sofradir 480×6 HgCdTe IDDCA.
Integrated Detector Dewar Cryocooler Assembly (IDDCA)
plays an important role in different applications including
environmental monitoring, biomedicine, process control, III. FAILURE MODES AND AFFECTING FACTORS
science and space [1-3]. Great progress in infrared detector The IDDCA reliability is limited by the different sub-
technology has been achieved during the passed decades. For assemblies. The main failure modes are interconnect failure of
instance, infrared systems which previously used a single
IRFPA, vacuum failure of Dewar, contamination and wear of
element detector to scan a scene now have focal plane array
detectors with over 4 million pixels. With the development of Cryocooler. Table I lists the main failure modes that occur in
infrared detector technology, reliability is becoming the major each sub-assembly of the IDDCA, and corresponding affecting
bottleneck that limits the engineering application of IDDCA. factors of these failure modes.
Both of internal and external factors such as material defect,
welding and environmental temperature may impact on TABLE I. FAILURE MODES AND AFFECTING FACTORS
IDDCA reliability. In this paper, the structures of each sub-
Sub-assembly Failure Mode Affecting factor
assembly of IDDCA have been described, and moreover, the
failure modes and mechanisms have been discussed based on Number of cooldown
Interconnect failure
IRFPA cycles
reliability physics.
Diodes degradation Temperature
Outgassing
II. SUB-ASSEMBLIES OF IDDCA Dewar Vacuum failure
Leakage rate
The IDDCA consists of three key sub-assemblies as shown Spring fracture Fabrication processes
in Fig. 1: Infrared Focal Plane Array (IRFPA), Dewar and Leakage of working
Cryocooler. The IRFPA is integrated in the Dewar's internal Welding procedure
medium
cold finger, forming a detector Dewar assembly. The detector Cryocooler
Assembly disalignment
Mechanical wear
Dewar assembly and cryocooler are coupled together to form a Temperature
final assembly. Working medium
Outgassing
contamination
Functions of each sub-assembly are described as follows:
(1) IRFPA: photoelectric conversion and signal
preprocessing.
(2) Dewar: as an IRFPA encapsulation and protection

978-1-4799-1014-4/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE 935

Authorized licensed use limited to: ASELSAN A.S.. Downloaded on May 23,2022 at 05:57:24 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 IV. FAILURE MECHANISM ANALYSIS
A. IRFPA
IRFPA is a hybrid architecture. It consists of a die detecting
the incoming photons, a read-out integrated circuit (ROIC) die,
and indium bumps. The ROIC die multiplexes the output signal
and the indium bumps establish electrical and mechanical
interconnection between the two dies [4]. The advantage of
such structure is that the detector die and the silicon ROIC can
be manufactured respectively, to enable them to attain their
better performance status. Fig. 2 is the most widely used flip-
chip bonding structure, the electrical interconnection of the
photo-detecting diode arrays and silicon ROIC is connected by
indium bumps.
Figure 2. Flip-chip bonding structure of IRFPA.
(1) Interconnect failure
IDDCA generally works intermittently, its IRFPA hybrid
chip will be subjected to thousands of temperature cycles from
deep cryogenic to room temperature. Due to the different
thermal expansion coefficients (TEC) of the substrate material
of the photo-detecting diode array and the silicon material of
ROIC, large thermal stress is generated within the hybrid chip
as the temperature change, ultimately leading to the indium
bumps crack.
The TEC of the IRFPA hybrid chips materials are shown in
Table. II. When the temperature of the IRFPA drops down, the
degree of contraction of the detector die substrate is greater
than the read-out circuit (see Fig. 3). Since the thermal
expansion coefficient of the substrate material of detector die is
usually larger than that of the Si read-out circuit, indium bumps
suffer large shear stresses at the interfaces between indium
bump and pads, which can be written as [5]:
  L 1   2  T / h
Where L is the distance between the indium joint and
neutral point of the chip. 1 ,  2 is the coefficients of thermal
expansion of the substrate and the read-out circuit, respectively.
T is the temperature range during the thermal cycles. h is
the height of indium bump. It can be found from Eq. (1) that
the indium bumps in the chip edge (especially the four corners)
have largest distances to the neutral point of the chip, thus
these indium bumps are most prone to crack because of
relatively large shear stresses.
TABLE II. THERMAL EXPANSION COEFFICIENTS OF THE MATERIALS OF IRFPA
Material CdTe GaAs Si
Thermal expansion
5.9 6.5 2.6
coefficients(10-6K-1)
Authorized licensed use limited to: ASELSAN A.S.. Downloaded on May 23,2022 at 05:57:24 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Figure 3. The deformation of IRFPA hybrid chip during thermal cycles.
(2) Detector Diodes Array Degradation
Hg1−xCdxTe(HgCdTe) is a tunable semiconductor alloy
system that can be used to detect photons from near IR to very
long wavelength IR, and has been a mainstay of high
performance IRFPA systems for many years [6]. The electrical
and optical properties of Hg1−xCdxTe depend on its energy
band structure. With the increase of x, the energy gap for
Hg1−xCdxTe increases from a negative value for HgTe to a
positive value for CdTe, providing an unprecedented degree of
freedom in IR detector design. However, one of the
technological disadvantages of this material is the weak Hg-Te
bond, which is about 30% weaker than Cd-Te bond, resulting
in bulk, surface and interface instabilities. During the life of
IDDCA, the increasing Hg vacancies of HgCdTe material
impact on the electrical and optical properties of the assembly.
Baking experiments on HgCdTe diodes showed that high
temperature baking can induce a large number of defects in
depletion region. Thus with the decrease of the lifetime of the
minority carrier the diffusion current increases [7].
Simultaneously, the surface recombination velocity is also
increased with the increasing of defects in the passivation layer
of the device surface.
B. Dewar
The Dewar is an important sub-assembly which connects
the IRFPA and the cooler. Fig. 4 is a schematic structural view
of the Dewar. The vacuum chamber is formed between the
shell and the cold finger. The IRFPA chip is mounted on the
head of the cold finger, and the signals are led out through
sealing leads.
(1)
Figure 4. Schematic structure of Dewar.
Owing to the low working temperature (typically 80K) of
the IRFPA, the Dewar has to be maintained at high degree of
vacuum. If the degree of vacuum is decreased, the Dewar heat
load will increase because of intensified convective heat
transferring, and ultimately the operating temperature of
IRFPA chip cannot be guaranteed. The Dewar's vacuum failure
is affected by two factors: leakage and outgassing.
In The leakage is determined by the quality of welding. The
influence of leakage rate on the vacuum of the Dewar can be
32.1 represented as:
936
 Ft  V P
where F is the leakage rate of Dewar, t is the duration, V is
the volume of the vacuum chamber, P is the changing
amount of the vacuum chamber pressure.
The most important source of outgassing is gas desorption
of the Dewar material. In the assembly process of the Dewar,
some gases (such as water vapor and hydrogen gas) may be
adsorbed onto the parts. When the Dewar is vacuumized,
desorption of the adsorbed gas will result in vacuum reduction.
Temperature is the most important factor affecting the
outgassing rate:
E different ambient temperatures will lead to mechanical wear of
q  q0 exp( ) 
RT
where q is the outgassing rate, q0 is a constant, E is the
activation energy, R is the universal gas constant, T is the
ambient temperature.
Eq. (3) indicates that the outgassing rate increases as the
increase of temperature to minimize the influence of outgassing,
the adsorbed gas should be exhausted in the Dewar by high-
temperature baking after assembly. The baking temperature
above 200oC could remove water vapor effectively, and higher
temperature (above 400oC) could further eliminate hydrogen
[8]. However, since the baking temperature is usually
controlled below 90oC in order to protect IRFPA chip, the
outgassing is non-negligible for the detector Dewar assembly.
C. Cryocooler
The schematic structure of Stirling cryocooler is shown in
Fig. 5 [9]. The working principle bases on the Stirling cycle
which is a closed regenerative cycle with a gaseous working
medium. A regenerator is used as an internal heat exchanger in
order to obtain a high efficiency.
Figure 5. Schematic structure of Stirling cryocooler.
The main failure modes of current cryocoolers include
spring fracture, leakage of working medium, mechanical wear,
working medium contamination.
(1) Spring Fracture
Spring fracture is caused by the fatigue stress. In theory, the
failure will not occur if the maximum stress level that the
spring suffers is far below the fatigue limit stress. But if the
material and process are not well controlled, the spring fatigue
fracture could occur after a certain number of running cycles,
resulting in the sudden decline of the cryocooler performance.
(2) Leakage of Working Medium
Authorized licensed use limited to: ASELSAN A.S.. Downloaded on May 23,2022 at 05:57:24 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
(2) Leakage of working medium is determined by the sealing
measures. High-pressure helium gas is used as the working
medium, which is a very small molecule with strong
permeability. Leakage of the helium gas may occur at sealing
interface, weld and sintering zones of cable plugs. The cooling
performance declines obviously when the gas pressure drops to
a certain level.
(3) Mechanical Wear
Clearance seals are applied between the piston and cylinder
against leakage of working medium along the pistons.
Generally, the initial gap between the piston and cylinder
should be as small as possible. However, disalignment and
the piston cylinder assembly. For instance, Thales Cryogenics
found that a non-constant gap between the piston and cylinder
could lead to additional radial forces on the piston assembly
and the increasing probability of mechanical wear [10].
Mechanical wear of the piston and cylinder accelerates gas
leakage along the piston. Furthermore, the debris produced by
the mechanical wear contaminates the regenerator, resulting in
thermal efficiency degradation.
(4) Working Medium Contamination
The cooling capacity of cryocooler is sensitive for working
medium contamination. Outgassing is a crucial factor that
causes working medium contamination. It has been found that
most contaminants in cryocoolers consist carbon dioxide, water,
cleaning solvents (acetone and alcohol), nitrogen and oxygen
[11]. The regenerator is the key part that suffers from
contamination. It is filled with porous material with a large
surface area, and its cold end temperature is usually at 100K or
low, which in turn results in a strong adsorption of gaseous and
liquid contaminants. The adsorption of contaminants in the
regenerator leads to the decreasing of the heat transfer area, and
then a negative effect on the heat exchanger performance. On
the other hand, the contaminants would tend to block the
narrow passages in the regenerator, thus the increasing of the
flow resistance causes the degradation of cooling performance.
V. CONCLUSIONS
Reliability of IDDCA is critical as it impacts on its
engineering application. The failure modes of IDDCA,
including interconnect failure, diodes degradation, vacuum
failure, spring fracture, leakage of working medium,
mechanical wear, and contamination, have been systematically
analyzed in this paper. Generally, thermal cycles, outgassing,
process defects are the major causes leading to failure of
IDDCA. The research results provide references for the
reliability growth research of IDDCA.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was financially supported by foundation
program of ZX1228150. The authors would like to thank all
colleagues for their helpful discussions and suggestions.
REFERENCES
[1] L. Becker, “Current and future trends in infrared focal plane array
technology,” In Proceedings of SPIE, pp. 588105-588115, 2005.
937
[2] B. L. Chen, “Important applications of IRFPA imaging devices”,
Infrared and Laser Engineering,” vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 168-172, 2005.
[3] P. Bensussan, P. Tribolet, and G. Destefanis, “50 years of successful
MCT research and production in France,” In Proceedings of SPIE, pp.
818501-1-818501-12, 2009.
[4] R. K. Asatourian, “Infrared focal plane array storage life assessment by
accelerated aging,” Quality and reliability engineering international, vol.
14, no. 6, pp. 425-432, 1998.
[5] Y. H. Kim, J. H. Choi, and K. S. Choi, “New reflow process for indium
bump,” In Proceedings of SPIE, pp. 60-67, 1997.
[6] G. Brill, Y. P. Chen, and P. Wijewarnasuriya, “Infrared focal plane
array technology utilizing HgCdTe/Si: successes, roadblocks, and
material improvements,” In Proceedings of SPIE, pp. 74190L-14, 2009.
938
Authorized licensed use limited to: ASELSAN A.S.. Downloaded on May 23,2022 at 05:57:24 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
[7] D. F. Liu, Y.G. Yuan, and H. M. Gong, “Temperature effect on I-V
characteristics of the HgCdTe diodes,” Infrared and Laser Engineering,
vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 443-446, 2007.
[8] X. B. Yu, “Analysis of dewar thermal isolation and high vacuum
lifetime,” Laser & Infrared, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 275-278, 2004.
[9] B. Y. Yang, H. Fu, and Y. N. Wu, “Analysis of contamination
mechanism and control technology of mechanical cryocooler,”
Cryogenics, vol. 6, no. 10, pp. 37-41, 2005.
[10] B. Tonny, M. Jeroen, and B. Peter, “Development of a 6W high
reliability cryogenic cooler at Thales Cryogenics,” In Proceedings of
SPIE, pp. 33-42, 2003.
[11] S. W. K. Yuan, D. T. Kuo, and A. S. Loc, “Cryocooler contamination
study,” Advances in Cryogenic Engineering, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 275-
281, 2000.