Foreword: Special Section on “The Reliability of Advanced Microelectronic Packaging—Part II: Structure–Property Relationships”

Modern technologies and devices ranging from smartphones, computers, cloud computing, industrial automation, automobiles, to the Internet of Things are enabled by integrated circuits (ICs) and their associated packages. The ICs have evolved from the early small-scale integration (SSI) to the later more complex very-large-scale integration (VLSI) and the subsequent ultra-large-scale integration (ULSI), in a continuous quest for improved functionality, higher performance, smaller form factors, and lower cost. The rate has generally followed Moore’s law.