We have developed a new model to analyze the thermal failure mechanism due to electrical-over-stress (EOS) for two-dimensional planar pn-junction structures where the failure power is proportional to about 1/5 power of the failure time. We adopted a pseudo two-dimensional numerical simulation method where a pn-junction diode is divided into small elements and represented by a circuit network composed of many minute resistors and diodes. The failure mechanism studied by Wunsch and Bell, that is one of many studies for one-dimensional pn-diodes, is not valid for the case of two-dimensional pn-junction, such as a planar type junction. On the contrary, the failure mechanism was found to be much correlative with the junction structure, especially the impurity concentration in the substrate in the two-dimensional case. When the impurity concentration in the substrate is high enough (e.g. Nsub1017[cm-3]), the breakdown occurs at the whole junction. The heat transfer is one-dimensional and the failure power is proportional to about 1/2 power of the failure time, which is well known results reported by many researchers: e.g. Wunsch &Bell. On the other hand, when the impurity concentration in the substrate is low enough (e.g. Nsub1016[cm-3]), the breakdown occurs locally at the junction edge. The heat transfer is two-dimensional and the failure power is in proportion to about 1/5 power of the failure time.

This paper presents an approximation method for deriving the availability of a parallel redundant system with preventive maintenance (PM) and common-cause failures. The system discussed is composed of two identical units. A single service facility is available for PM and repair. The repair times, the PM times and the failure times except for common-cause failures are all assumed to be arbitrarily distributed. The presented method formulates the problem of the availability analysis of a parallel redundant system as a Markov renewal process which represents the state transitions of one specified unit in the system. This method derives the availability easily and accurately. Further, the availability obtained by this method is exact in a special case.