Infant mortality refers to early failures from manufacturing defects — the initial high failure rate period where latent defects cause premature failures, requiring burn-in and screening to prevent customer returns.

What Is Infant Mortality?

• Definition: Early-life failures due to latent defects.
• Bathtub Curve: First region with decreasing failure rate.
• Timeframe: First hours to months of operation.

Causes: Contamination, particle-induced shorts, plating defects, incomplete solder joints, residual stress, CMP defects, lithography errors, assembly issues.

Why It Matters: Customer dissatisfaction, warranty costs, brand damage, field returns.

Detection: Burn-in testing, HTOL screening, electrical testing, visual inspection.

Mitigation: Extended burn-in, process control (SPC), defect reduction, root cause analysis, supplier qualification.

Burn-In: Operate devices at elevated stress to accelerate infant mortality failures before shipping.

Screening: Electrical testing to identify weak devices.

Infant mortality is first curve in bathtub — controlling it prevents customers from encountering day-one failures and costly returns.