电迁移致无铅钎料微互连焊点的 脆性蠕变断裂行为

研究了电迁移条件下不同电流密度(0.8~1.27×10⁴A/cm²)和通电时间(0~96 h)对无铅钎料模拟微互连焊点的蠕变断裂行为的影响.研究结果发现,电迁移作用加速了焊点的蠕变断裂过程,随着电迁移通电时间的延长及电流密度的增加,其蠕变应变速率显著增大,而蠕变寿命逐渐缩短;电迁移还导致焊点蠕变断裂机制发生明显变化,在高电流密度或长时间通电的电迁移后,微互连焊点在服役条件下会发生由延性断裂向脆性断裂的转变.     

Characterization of Stress–Strain Response of Lead-Free Solder Joints Using a Digital Image Correlation Technique and Finite-Element Modeling

The stress–strain response of miniaturized Sn-Ag-Cu (SAC) lead-free solder joints in the thickness range of 80 μm to about 1.1 mm was studied. A high-resolution three-dimensional (3D) digital image correlation system was used for in situ measurement of displacement and strain fields in the solder joints during tensile testing. These measurements showed that the localization of plastic strain and stress buildup occurs mainly at the interface of the solder. With increasing solder gap thickness the size of the plastically deformed zone in the solder increases, resulting in transformation of a brittle interfacial fracture to a ductile fracture within the bulk of the solder. The experimental deformation plots of solder joints and strain-rate-dependent tensile tests on bulk solder material were used to establish a new constitutive material model for the solder. This strain-rate- and pressure-dependent material model was implemented in ABAQUS through the user subroutine CREEP. In agreement with the experiments, the finite-element method simulation revealed a pronounced thickness effect leading to higher tensile strength of thinner solder joints.     

A novel accelerated test technique for assessment of mechanical reliability of solder interconnects

New generations of lead-free solder interconnects are widely used in consumer electronics. Reliability of the devices which are subjected to rough handling, depends on the fracture resistance of the solder interconnects to shock and mechanical loading. The conventional reliability testing procedures are reported to be expensive and time consuming. Thus alternative tests and evaluation methods for reliability assessment of solder joints are required. In this study a new method for quality assessment of solder interconnects under high strain vibrational shear loading is presented using an ultrasonic fatigue testing system in combination with a special experimental set-up. Using this technique lifetime curves for solder ball bonds of two different Sn–Ag–Cu lead-free alloys were obtained. Failure mechanisms of the solder ball bonds were studied using SEM methods and the reliability curves were discussed with regard to the failure modes and the composition of the lead-free alloys. The applicability of the proposed method is discussed with regard to the literature data.     

Thermally induced deformation of solder joints in real packages: Measurement and analysis

The paper presents a hybrid experimental and analytical approach to track the deformation of solder joints in an electronic package subject to a thermal process. The solder joint strain is directly measured using a computer vision technique. The strain measurement is analyzed following an approach that is devised based on an established solder constitutive relation. The analysis leads to the determination of the solder joint stress and in turn, to the separation of the elastic, plastic and creep strain from the measured total strain. The creep strain rate and stress–strain hysteresis loop are also obtained. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the applications and to show the viability of the approach. Each case involves a resistor package with SAC (Sn95.5Ag3.8Cu0.7) solder joints, which is subjected to a temperature variation between ambient and 120 °C. The results confirm that shear is a dominant strain component in such solder joints. The shear strain varies nearly in phase with the temperature whereas the shear stress exhibits a different trend of variation due to stress relaxation. The peak shear stress of around 10 MPa to 15 MPa are found, which occur at near 70 °C in both cases, when the temperature ramps up at approximately 3 °C/min. The creep shear strain goes up to 0.02 and accounts for over 80% of the total shear strain. The creep strain rate is in the order of magnitude of 10⁻⁵ s⁻¹. Responding to the temperature cycling with such moderate rate, the creep strain shows modest ratcheting while the stress–strain hysteresis stabilizes in two cycles.     

A Method to Identify Steady Creep Strain from Indentation Creep Using a New Reference Area of Indentation

For the design of high-density electronic packages, finite element method (FEM) analyses to evaluate strength reliabilities of solder joints should be conducted by employing the material parameters which can precisely reflect the creep properties of solder joints in actual electronic equipment. To obtain accurate results of the structural analyses of the solder joints, a method to evaluate the steady-state creep deformation in situ must be developed. The indentation creep test is an effective method to evaluate the creep properties of the solder joints in situ; however, the creep properties obtained by this method do not give the same results as those obtained by tensile creep tests using bulk specimens. In this paper, the indentation creep test at 1 N loading for 9,000 s duration was experimentally conducted to confirm that the steady-state creep deformation obtained by the indentation creep test did not coincide with that by the tensile creep tests using bulk specimens. To identify the reason, the indentation creep simulation was conducted by FEM analysis. As a result, it was found that the reference area used to obtain the creep strain from the indentation creep test should be modified. A method to obtain the new reference area is proposed from comparisons of experiments with simulations. Finally, this paper shows that the creep properties obtained by the indentation creep test using the new reference area coincided with those obtained by tensile creep tests using bulk specimens.     

Local and Global Properties of a Lead-Free Solder

Elastic and viscous properties including Young’s modulus, hardness, creep rate sensitivity, and fatigue resistance of Sn-1.2Ag-0.5Cu-0.05Ni lead-free solder have been investigated. The properties of bulk specimens and in situ solder balls are compared. Experiments show good correlations of Young’s modulus and creep rate sensitivity between conventional measurements and nanoindentation results on bulk specimens. Further mechanical properties of the beach-ball microstructure in solder balls are characterized by nanoindentation. The load–partial unload technique has been used to determine the variation in mechanical properties with increasing depth of penetration into the intermetallic inclusions in the in situ solder. The fatigue resistances of the bulk specimens and solder balls are compared by using the novel nanoimpact method. In comparison with bulk specimens, it is found that in situ solder has higher Young’s modulus, lower creep strain rate sensitivity, and better fatigue resistance. The effects of soldering and the scale differences strongly affect the mechanical and fatigue properties of in situ solder.     

Constraining Effects of Lead-Free Solder Joints During Stress Relaxation

Reliability and quality control of microelectronics depend on a detailed understanding of the complex thermomechanical properties of miniaturized lead-free solder joints. With the continuous reduction in size of modern electronic devices, including also the size of the solder joints themselves, mechanical constraint effects may become of importance for the reliability of the joints. In the present study stress relaxation tests in tensile mode were performed on model solder joints consisting of eutectic Sn-3.5Ag solder between Cu substrates. The gap size of the joints was varied between 750 μm and 150 μm in order to investigate the variation of the mechanical properties as a function of the gap size. As it turned out, stress relaxation was dramatically reduced when the solder gaps became smaller due to constraint effects already well known from earlier measurements of the tensile strength. By employing a traditional creep model, the stress exponents and the activation energies were derived and compared with available data in the literature. The consequences of these constraint effects for the case of thermomechanical fatigue are discussed.     

电阻法测量无铅焊点蠕变的有效性实验研究

为了解用于焊点性能评估的电阻测试法能否精确反映其蠕变特性,利用特制的焊点测试系统,同步采集无铅焊点在室温、25 N载荷下的电阻应变和剪切蠕变.实验表明它们的总体变化趋势相似,均可分为线性与指数阶段,但变化速率存在明显差异.两者临界拐点的延时程度与焊点的尺寸因子k有关,在一定的范围内(k= 4.5～8.5),延时程度仅在...     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">In Situ</Emphasis> Optical Creep Observation of Joint-Scale Tin–Silver–Copper Solder Shear Samples

In this paper the creep behavior of lead-free 96.5Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu solder is evaluated. A series of creep tests at different stress/temperature and strain rate/temperature pairs has been conducted. The tests were observed in situ with a high-magnification camera system. Optical observation results are presented from selected tests, showing the occurrence of surface effects such as shear bands, voiding, and rumpling. From these observations the main deformation mechanisms were derived and compiled in terms of their dependence on the test conditions.     

Large-Scale Correlations in the Orientation of Grains in Lead-Free Solder Joints

A large number of lead-free Sn-Ag-Cu controlled collapse chip connection (C4) solder joints (∼100 μm in diameter) in flip-chip microelectronic packages were studied by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) in order to describe the statistical distribution of grain size and coincident site lattice boundaries associated with 60 deg twins in the Sn phase, as a function of silver content. It is shown that lower silver content results in smaller grains, and a lower propensity for grains to exhibit twinning symmetries. Indirect measurements of the creep properties of these joints were also obtained as a function of silver content, showing that, in the strain rate and temperature conditions that are the most relevant to the microelectronic industry, solder joints with low silver content are more susceptible to creep deformation.     

A quantitative evaluation of time-independent and time-dependent deformations of lead-free and lead-containing solder alloys

A method to separate plasticity and creep is discussed for a quantitative evaluation of the plastic, transient creep, and steady-state creep deformations of solder alloys. The method of separation employs an elasto-plastic-creep constitutive model comprised of the sum of the plastic, transient creep, and steady-state creep deformations. The plastic deformation is expressed by the Ramberg-Osgood law, the steady-state creep deformation by Garofalo’s creep law, and the transient creep deformation by a model proposed here. A method to estimate the material constants in the elasto-plastic-creep constitutive model is also proposed. The method of separation of the various deformations is applied to the deformation of the lead-free solder alloy Sn/3Ag/0.5Cu and the lead-containing solder alloy Sn/37Pb to compare the differences in the plastic, transient creep, and steady-state creep deformations. The method of separation provides a powerful tool to select the optimum lead-free solder alloys for solder joints of electronic devices.     

Effects of cooling rate on mechanical properties of near-eutectic tin-lead solder joints

This paper reports the results of a study on the effect of the cooling rate during solidification on the shear creep and low cycle shear fatigue behavior of 60 Sn/40 Pb solder joints, and on bulk solder tensile properties. Solder joints were made with three different initial microstructures by quenching, air-cooling and furnace-cooling. They have similar steady-state strain rates under creep at relatively high shear stresses (i.e. in the matrix creep region) but creep at quite different strain rates at lower shear stresses (i.e. in the grain boundary creep region). These results are ascribed to the refined grain size and less lamellar phase morphology that results on increasing the cooling rate. Tensile tests on bulk solders that were cold-worked, quenched and furnace-cooled show that a faster cooling rate decreases the ultimate strength and increases the ductility at low strain rates. The fatigue life of quenched solder joints is shown to be longer than that of the furnace-cooled joints.     

Impact of the number of chips on the reliability of the solder balls for wire-bonded stacked-chip ball grid array packages

This investigation examines how the number of chips affects the reliability of solder balls for wire-bonded stacked-chip ball grid array packages under thermal cycling tests. The studied objects were packages with one, two, three and four stacked chips. Three-dimensional finite element analysis was utilized to simulate the stress/strain behavior of all studied packages. Two kinds of properties of 63Sn/37Pb eutectic solder were employed individually in the finite element analyses. One property of the solder was assumed to exhibit the elastic–plastic–creep behavior. Temperature-dependent stress/strain curves and Norton’s steady creep equation were used in the analysis. Another property of the solder governed by the Anand’s viscoplastic model was also employed to describe the behavior of solder balls. The simulation results in the elastic–plastic–creep analyses and viscoplastic analyses reveal that the von Mises stress, the non-linear strain, and the inelastic strain energy density of the critical solder balls increase with the number of stacked chips, but the increments become gradually stable as the number of chips increases. Three fatigue life prediction models—Darveaux’s model, the modified Coffin–Manson model and the creep-fatigue model—were applied to evaluate the fatigue life of the studied packages. Prediction results indicate that the fatigue life of the solder balls decreases as the number of stacked chips increases, and the decrease in predicted life shows stable behavior as the number of chips increases. The stable trend is consistent with experimental observation in the thermal cycling tests. By comparing with the experimental data, it is shown that the Darveaux’s model gives better prediction than the other two models.     

An Analytical Elasto-Creep Model of Solder Joints in Leadless Chip Resistors: Part 2—Applications in Fatigue Reliability Predictions for SnPb and Lead-Free Solders

For pt. 1 see ibid., p.681-94, (2007). In Part 1, a novel two-dimensional model was presented for multi-axial thermal stresses, elastic strains, creep strains, and creep energy density at the interfaces of solder joints in leadless chip resistor (LCR) assemblies. In this paper, the model is used to characterize the creep performance of SnPb and SAC lead-free solder joints in LCRs. For both the SAC lead-free and eutectic tin-lead solder joints the predicted cyclic stresses and strains exhibit ratcheting behavior, in good agreement with finite-element predictions. The model is also employed to assess the role of ramp rate and temperature variations in accelerated thermal cycling (ATC) tests. The predictions of the present model correlate well with the experimentally measured number of cycles-to-failure using the Coffin-Manson strain-based model for the SnPb solder and energy-based life prediction model for the SAC solder joints.     

Mechanical behavior of solder joints under dynamic four-point impact bending

Reliability of solder joints under drop impact loading is important to mobile electronic products. In this paper, dynamic four-point impact bending tests of board level electronic packages are carried out to investigate mechanical behavior of solder joints. In the test, strain gauges, a high speed camera and the digital image correlation method are used to acquire strain and deflection of the printed circuit board (PCB). After validated by the test data, a finite element model of the dynamic four-point impact bending test is used to obtain strain and stress in the solder joints. Then, failure predictions of the solder joints are made by strain index, and the predictions are compared with the experimental observations. Furthermore, a strain rate dependent Johnson-Cook material model and rate independent elastic-plastic model of lead-free solder are used to investigate the effect of strain rate on behavior of solder joints under drop impact loading. We find that the material model has insignificant influence on the deflection of the PCB during the drop impact but severely affect the stress and strain in solder joints. The rate independent elastic-plastic solder material model always underestimates the stress and overestimates the strain of the solder joints. The index of equivalent plastic strain computed by the strain rate dependent Johnson-Cook model can predict more realistic failure behavior of the solder joints.     

Microstructure characterization of SnAgCu solder bearing Ce for electronic packaging

The creep-rupture lives of Sn3.8Ag0.7Cu and Sn3.8Ag0.7Cu0.03Ce lead-free solder joints for electronic packaging were investigated, respectively. And the relationship between creep behavior and intermetallic compound (IMC: Ag₃Sn, Cu₆Sn₅, CeSn₃) particles in SnAgCu/SnAgCuCe solder joints has been obtained. Meanwhile, rare earth Ce concentration gradient and retardation effect of Ce on the IMC layer have been observed at the solder/Cu interface. Moreover, aging reaction of Sn and Cu, and the effect mechanism of rare earth Ce on two IMCs (Cu₆Sn₅ and Cu₃Sn) are reported.     

Reliability study of Sn–Ag–Cu–Ce soldered joints in quad flat packages

The reliability of Sn–Ag–Cu–Ce lead-free soldered joints in quad flat packages under thermal cycling was investigated based on finite element simulation and experiments. The stress and strain response of fine pitch QFP device lead-free soldered joints were analyzed using finite element method based on Garofalo–Arrhenius model. The simulated results indicate that the creep distribution is not uniform, the heel of joints is the maximum creep strain concentrated sites. And comparisons were then made with experimental results of the cracks observed in the Sn–Ag–Cu–Ce soldered joints subjected to the temperature cycled experiment. In addition, the relative mechanical and metallurgical factors, which dominate the failure of soldered joints, were utilized to analyze the phenomena. The fracture surfaces indicate that crack initiate and propagate along the interface among bulk Cu₆Sn₅ phases in Sn–Ag–Cu–Ce soldered joints.     

Microstructural Evolution of Sn-Ag-Sb Solder with Indium Additions

The effects of 1 wt.%, 5 wt.%, and 10 wt.% additions of indium (In) on the microstructure and compound morphology of Sn-Ag-Sb lead-free solder joints␣were examined. The results showed that In prompts the formation of Ag₃(Sn,In), Ag₂(In,Sn), and InSb compounds within the solder matrix. As the amount of In was increased, the Sn atoms in the Ag₃Sn compound were gradually replaced by In atoms, prompting a transformation from Ag₃Sn to Ag₃(Sn,In) and finally to Ag₂(In,Sn). This transformation occurs more readily under high-temperature conditions. The Ag₂(In,Sn) compound formed in Sn-Ag-Sb-xIn/Cu solder joints was found to have either a leaf-like morphology or an antler-like morphology. Finally, with In additions greater than 5 wt.%, the Cu₆Sn₅ interfacial compounds in the solder/Cu joints transformed into Cu₆(Sn,In)₅.     

Generation of Tin(II) Oxide Crystals on Lead-Free Solder Joints in Deionized Water

The effect of the anode and cathode on the electrochemical corrosion behavior of lead-free Sn-Ag-Cu and Sn-Ag-Cu-Bi solder joints in deionized water was investigated. Corrosion studies indicate that SnO crystals were generated on the surfaces of all lead-free solder joints. The constituents of the lead-free solder alloys, such as Ag, Cu, and Bi, did not affect the corrosion reaction significantly. In contrast to lead-free solders, PbO _x was formed on the surface of the traditional 63Sn-37Pb solder joint in deionized water. A cathode, such as Au or Cu, was necessary for the electrochemical corrosion reaction of solders to occur. The corrosion reaction rate decreased with reduction of the cathode area. The formation mechanism of SnO crystals was essentially a galvanic cell reaction. The anodic reaction of Sn in the lead-free solder joints occurred through solvation by water molecules to form hydrated cations. In the cathodic reaction, oxygen dissolved in the deionized water captures electrons and is deoxidized to hydroxyl at the Au or Cu cathode. By diffusion, the anodic reaction product Sn²⁺ and the cathodic reaction product OH⁻ meet to form Sn(OH)₂, some of which can dehydrate to form more stable SnO·xH₂O crystals on the surface of the solder joints. In addition, thermodynamic analysis confirms that the Sn corrosion reaction could occur spontaneously.     

Time-independent elastic–plastic behaviour of solder materials

For a long time, constitutive modelling of solders has focused onto the elastic and creep properties. Indeed, the creep model describes the behaviour of solder joints under thermal cycling quite properly. However, in applications such as hand held electronic devices or automotive products, the pure mechanical impact like shock, bending and twisting may even matter more than sole thermo-mechanical fatigue.Therefore the time-independent behaviour of SnPb37, SnAg3.5 and SnAg4Cu0.5 has been investigated on flip chip solder joints. In the experimental tests a cyclic triangular strain wave with constant frequency but different amplitudes was used as the load function. This way the test enables to account for Bauschinger effects. The strain wave amplitudes ranged from Δ=0.25% to 4%, the strain wave frequency was fixed at f=1 Hz. The test temperature ranged from T=5 to 50 °C.The test specimen consisted of two silicon chips (3.3 × 3.3 mm²) bonded by 4 flip chip joints (one at each corner). A specially designed Micro Shear Tester has been used for the experiments with this type of specimen. In contrast to similar setups, it is actively compensated for its finite stiffness. Therefore, it is able to record force–displacement hysteresis with a resolution of better than 1 mN and 20 nm, respectively. Based on these measurements, the parameters of the constitutive equations have been evaluated by FEM analysis. This way, the complex stress state within the sample during the test has been considered precisely providing for high accuracy of the parameter extracted.As a typical application, a three point bending experiment has been simulated by FEM applying different constitutive models for the solder material. Comparing the results, it becomes clear: All the three contributions, i.e., the elastic, the creep, and the time-independent plastic material behaviour, are required in the model. Otherwise it would be incomplete and hence insufficient for assisting in the design of today's electronics packages even with respect to the most frequent load cases.