Crack formation in metallized single crystal silicon substrates

Ball bonding of metallized silicon substrates has been simulated by microindentation, with a hemispherical diamond indentor, of (100) silicon wafers that contained aluminum film layers. The indentation loads varied up to 35N and the thickest aluminum film, composed of four layers, was 100 × 10^-6 m. The radial cracks in the silicon, beneath the aluminum film, were measured as a function of indentation load and aluminum film thickness, and compared to that of unmetallized silicon. The crack lengths have been used to determine the fracture toughness,K _c = 24.4 ± 4.9 MPam^0.5, which is twice the value obtained by Vickers indentation experiments. A model describing the relationship between the film thickness versus the radial crack length is presented.