Analytical Modeling of Electronic and Photonic Materials Reliability: Perspective and Extension

The objective of this review is double-folded: to show materials scientists, mechanical engineers and reliability physicists not involved in electronics, photonics, micro-electronic-mechanical-systems (MEMS) or MOEMS (optical MEMS) engineering what kind of value they could bring to this important “high-tech” area, as well as to demonstrate to “high-tech” engineers how they could benefit from the application of what has been developed, for many years, in the general field of physical design for reliability of materials and structures employed in various fields of engineering and applied science and what could be effectively applied to their body of knowledge. Accordingly, in the perspective part of the review some critical and even paradoxical, i.e., a-priori non-obvious, problems encountered in microelectronics and photonics materials science, reliability physics and structural analysis are addressed using what could be called analytical (“mathematical”) modeling. The extension part has to do with some specific, mostly aerospace, recent applications of the probabilistic design for reliability concept and analytical modeling effort.