{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,28]],"date-time":"2026-09-28T22:05:17Z","timestamp":1790633117977,"version":"4.1.0"},"reference-count":25,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"7","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,7]],"date-time":"2026-07-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1783382400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Micromachines"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Empirical power-law relationships are widely used in reliability physics to describe degradation kinetics and predict lifetime. Such behavior appears across diverse failure mechanisms, including time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB), hot-carrier injection (HCI), bias temperature instability (BTI), electromigration (EM), and fatigue. In this work, a thermodynamic framework for reliability kinetics is developed from Gibbs free energy and entropy partitioning, leading to a generalized kinetic equation that incorporates thermal activation, stress acceleration, and accumulated degradation. The formulation introduces two parameters: a stress coefficient, \u03b3, which describes the influence of externally applied stress, and a correlation coefficient, \u03c7, which describes how accumulated degradation influences subsequent degradation. Negative values of \u03c7 correspond to self-limiting evolution, positive values correspond to self-amplifying evolution, and \u03c7=0 represents statistically independent accumulation. Representative reliability mechanisms are interpreted within this framework, with TDDB approaching independent evolution, HCI exhibiting weak self-limiting behavior, BTI showing strong self-limiting behavior, and fatigue exhibiting self-amplifying behavior. Electromigration illustrates the complementary role of stress acceleration through \u03b3. The proposed framework provides a common thermodynamic interpretation of empirical power-law degradation kinetics and introduces degradation correlation as a complementary descriptor for reliability modeling and lifetime prediction.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/mi17070817","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,7]],"date-time":"2026-07-07T09:53:46Z","timestamp":1783418026000},"page":"817","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["A Thermodynamic Framework for Reliability Kinetics"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"17","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1878-5921","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Joseph B.","family":"Bernstein","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Ariel University, Ariel 40700, Israel"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"226","DOI":"10.1515\/zpch-1889-0416","article-title":"\u00dcber die Reaktionsgeschwindigkeit bei der Inversion von Rohrzucker durch S\u00e4uren","volume":"4","author":"Arrhenius","year":"1889","journal-title":"Z. 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