Detrimental Effects of Excessive Gold Plating on Lead-Free Solder Joints

While most of the industries are striving very hard to produce totally lead-free electronic products, many concerns remain regarding lead-free solder joint reliability. One major concern is the robustness of gold metallization of the electronic components for lead-free soldering. Increasing gold content has been known to result in embrittlement and early failure in electronic assemblies. Therefore, information about the lead-free solder/gold metallization interdiffusion at high-temperature applications is very important for controlling the technological processes for the reliability of the electronic interconnects. The challenges of solder/gold metallization interdiffusion during high-temperature application/test are gold embrittlement, intermetallics growth, void formation, and also tin-whisker formation. This paper illustrates few case histories of such challenges. Importance of the thickness of the gold termination has been discussed and some parameters to optimizing the thickness of the gold termination have been suggested. Some remedial measures are suggested to control the lead-free solder/gold metallization diffusion in the electronics interconnects.