The U.S. military has been greatly concerned over the issue of hermeticity of microelectronic devices that were to be manufactured to rigid criteria for use in high-reliability systems.

The final definition settled upon by the military and accepted by the analytical community was based on two requirements: To be hermetic, a device must:

1) Pass fine leak testing with a helium leak rate of no greater than 5 x 10 -8 std. cc atm. He/second, and then pass gross leak (bubble) testing, per Test Method 1014.
and:

2) Contain less than 5,000 parts per million by volume (ppm(v)) of moisture when tested at 100oC per Test Method 1018.

Topics in the book include: the history of military specifications and military standards, failures caused by condensable and noncondensable gases, hermeticity and the test methods, variations that cause variability, residual gas analysis via mass spectroscopy, and affiliated issues.

Case studies are included throughout the text, and the author pays particular attention to basic theories and the practical aspects of performing and interpreting residual gas analyses of the gases within a device.