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Due to environmental awareness, and the health hazards involved in using lead in solders, large efforts to develop lead-free soldering have been made in recent years. Sn-Ag alloys are expected to be one of the best candidate lead-free solders. Furthermore, from a reliability viewpoint, there has been interest in improved thermal fatigue resistance of solder interconnects. In this study, two lead-free solder alloys (Sn96.5Ag3.5, Sn95.5Ag3.8Cu0.7) were investigated in comparison to lead-containing solder alloys (Sn63Pb37, Sn59Pb40Ag1). These investigations were focused on mechanical and physical properties (coefficient of thermal expansion, stress-strain curves at different strain-rates) as well as on the microstructural appearance of the solders. The mechanical and thermomechanical behavior of the solders were examined by TMA, DTMA, tensile tests, and creep tests. Constant-load creep tests were performed on the specimens at temperatures from 20 degrees C to 150 degrees C. Steady-state strain rates spanned seven orders of magnitude ranging from 10/sup -11/ s/sup -1/ to 10/sup -4/ s/sup -1/. The second step is a reliability study of flip-chip assemblies on FR-4 (high T/sub g/ material) with three different underfill materials and with Sn63Pb37, Sn96.5Ag3.5, and Sn95.5Ag4.0Cu0.5 bumps, undergoing thermal cycles from - 55 degrees C to 125 degrees C and -55 degrees C to 150 degrees C. The deterioration (characterized by electrical resistance and SEM) are described. Furthermore, it is shown that the material parameters obtained from the tests will increase the precision of finite-element analysis for reliability studies of microelectronic packages with lead- free solder interconnects

Thermal fatigue of solder joints is investigated by means of the finite element method (FEM). During the usual thermal cycle regime with relatively slow temperature ramping rates, solder constitutive response is dominated by secondary creep. In the paper secondary creep laws are given for SnPb and SnAgCu solders, based on our own measurements and literature data. These secondary creep behaviours are compared to other data recently published. Additional primary creep terms are introduced in the creep description. To relate calculation results to fatigue life, criteria of Manson-Coffin type are proposed. These empirical laws are based on either the cyclic inelastic strain or dissipated energy. Effects of the choice of different creep laws on the calculated creep strains and energy densities are studied for two standard components on FR-4 board, a ceramic chip resistor (CC) of size 0805 and a plastic ball grid array with 225 I/O (PBGA 225). It is shown that the choice of the creep law, e.g. the inclusion of primary creep, does significantly affect only the results for the PBGA solder balls