We cooperate with several well-known institutions, e.g. the Material Testing Laboratory ICR Jena. ICR Jena operates in the field of physical materials reliability and lifetime prognostics. The applications include innovative constructions for microelectronic packaging, the implementation of sensorics into sensitive device control, and reliability physics of industrial appliances. Laboratory feasibilities are available for microstructure analysis of the materials, sensor calibration, short term destructive and non destructive tests, and long term testing. The special issue is the long term reliability prognostics based on the kinetics of physical degradation mechanisms.