Purple Plague in Microelectronics (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781041024248)

Syed Sajid Ahmad, Ph.D., contributed to quality and reliability enhancement of assembly processes at Intel (1979-1989), especially wire bonding.

Ahmad was involved in semiconductor packaging development at National Semiconductor (1990) and managed quality at GigaBit/TriQuint (1990-1991), a GaAs device company.

His major work at Micron Technology (1991-2003) involved, materials enhancement resulting in high reliability products and the development and implementation of advanced packaging of semiconductors.

At the Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering (2003-2015) based at the North Dakota State University, his focus was on enhancing research and manufacturing capabilities at the center in the areas of thin film, thick film, advanced packaging (CSP) and surface mount technology (SMT).

At Crossfire Technologies (2018-2019), Ahmad contributed to the development and enhancement of assembly processes.

He has over 40 publications and presentations and holds 54 US patents.

Dr. Rich C. Blish II is a retired veteran, having worked in semiconductor reliability physics for the entirety of his 45- year career.

All of his degrees are from Caltech, Pasadena: BS in Physics; MS and Ph.D in Materials Science in 1967.

Rich spent two years with Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, on the PicturePhone project; eleven years with Signetics (subsidiary of Phillips), San Jose, CA, doing analytical chemistry; fifteen years with Intel, Santa Clara, CA, in Package Reliability; eleven years with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Sunnyvale, CA, as an AMD Fellow in reliability modelling; and was a Spansion Fellow.

He has been a prolific author, having written about 60 patents and about 60 peer-reviewed scientific papers winning awards for paper quality at the International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS) and the ECTC. The papers (and some book chapters) are on a variety of topics, for example, failure analysis, metallurgy, and the physics of radiation damage.

Dr. Blish is a past General Chair and Board Chair for IRPS. He chaired the Sematech RTAB in 2000 and 2007 and has been an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability.