Guest Editorial Introduction to the Special Issue on the 2006 International Reliability Physics Symposium

S THE SCALING of electronic components into the nanometer regime continues and the addition of new materials is required to optimize device performance, new reliability and qualification issues continue to arise. The 44th Annual IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS) was held in San Jose, CA, on March 26‐30, 2006. The IRPS is the premier conference for presenting the latest studies of physics-based microelectronic reliability. This Special Issue features 12 papers that are extensions of presentations given at the conference. The diverse set of papers includes studies in assembly and packaging reliability, interconnect reliability, latchup, product reliability, soft error rate, memory reliability, process-induced damage, transistor reliability, and high-κ gate dielectric reliability.