Long-term reliability prediction of 935 nm LEDs using failure laws and low acceleration factor ageing tests

Numerous papers have already reported various results on electrical and optical performances of GaAs-based materials for optoelectronic applications. Other papers have proposed some methodologies for a classical estimation of reliability of GaAs compounds using life testing methods on a few thousand samples over 10000 hours of testing. In contrast, fewer papers have studied the complete relation between degradation laws in relation to failure mechanisms and the estimation of lifetime distribution using accelerated ageing tests considering a short test duration, low acceleration factor and analytical extrapolation. In this paper, we report the results for commercial InGaAs/GaAs 935 nm packaged light emitting diodes (LEDs) using electrical and optical measurements versus ageing time. Cumulative failure distributions are calculated using degradation laws and process distribution data of optical power. A complete methodology is described proposing an accurate reliability model from experimental determination of the failure mechanisms (defect diffusion) for this technology. Electrical and optical characterizations are used with temperature dependence, short-duration accelerated tests (less than 1500 h) with an increase in bias current (up to 50%), a small number of samples (less than 20) and weak acceleration factors (up to 240). Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.