An analytical approach has been developed to evaluate the interfacial shear and peel stresses in multilayered thin stacks subjected to uniform temperature variation. The approach, which is based on an extension of Suhir's bimetal thermostat model, provides a system of coupled linear second order differential equations used in solving for the interfacial stresses. Once these stresses have been determined, the normal stress in each layer and the deflection of the stack can be readily obtained.Two numerical examples are used to demonstrate the capability of the approach. The first example deals with a five-layered symmetric double-shear solder joint. The results are compared to a nonsymmetric three-layered solder joint to study the effect of bending and the interactions of material properties. One of the interesting features observed is that the maximum interfacial shear stress does not necessarily occur at the edge. The other numerical example is a four-layered transistor stack mounted on a substrate. The structural behavior is analyzed, and the effect of geometric dimension is examined. The present approach is shown to provide more accurate results than those of others based on the same assumptions. In addition, applications of the approach to more general stack configurations are also discussed.

The thermal cyclic shear stress/strain hysteresis response and associated steady-state creep parameters of 97Sn-3Cu solder joints have been determined using a beam specimen previously developed by Pao et al. (1992a). The solder joint was subjected to a 40-minute thermal cycling from 40°C to 140°C. A constitutive equation based on elastic and steady-state creep deformation for the solder has been formulated and implemented in a finite element program, ABAQUS, to model the experiment. The results show that the constitutive equation based on one single creep mechanism cannot fully account for the deformation during cooling, as opposed to the case of 90Pb-10Sn where the entire cyclic deformation can be well modeled by a similar constitutive equation (Pao et al., 1992c). This suggests that another creep mechanism is dominant for lower stresses and higher temperature. The thermal fatigue results show that the failure mechanism of 97Sn-3Cu joints is similar to that of 90Pb-10Sn joints, but the number of cycles to failure of 97Sn-Cu solder joints is at least 5 times longer than 90Pb-10Sn solder joints. This indicates the potential application of 97Sn-3Cu in place of 90Pb-10Sn solder.

Thermal fatigue of solder joints is critical to the performance and reliability of electronic components. It is well known that the fatigue life of solder joints is rather difficult to be estimated because of the complicated material behaviors and solder joint geometry. Conventional life prediction methods such as Coffin-Manson equation or its modifications usually over-estimate the thermal fatigue life. The main reason for this phenomenon is that the material properties are assumed constant during thermal cycling. In this paper, a damage evolution model is introduced for predicting the thermal fatigue life of solder joints. This method not only considers the degradation of material properties in the solder, but also saves substantial computational effort. In the present study, a damage function is determined by the hysteresis loops of creep shear stress-strain of solder joints in a double-beam specimen. The proposed model is then applied to investigate the solder joint reliability of a 272 PBGA package and a bottom-leaded plastic (BLP) package for model verification. The results from the present analysis seem to be encouraging. [S1043-7398(00)01003-3]

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The application of Ball Grid Array (BGA) technology in electronic packaging on high I/O plastic and ceramic packages has grown significantly during the past few years. Although PBGA (plastic BGA) has several advantages over fine-pitch Quad Flat Pack (QFP) in terms of smaller package area, higher I/Os, lower switching noise, large pitch, higher assembly yield, and improved robustness in manufacturing process, potential package reliability problems can still occur, e.g., excessive solder joint deformation induced by substrate warpage, moisture ingression (popcorn effect), large variation in solder ball size, voiding as a result of flux entrapment and improper pad/solder mask design (Marrs and Olachea, 1994; Solberg, 1994; Freyman and Petrucci, 1995; Lau, 1995; Donlin, 1996; Lasky et al., 1996; Munroe et al., 1996). Regardless of its improved thermal fatigue performance over the past few years through an extensive amount of research, the BGA solder joint may still pose a reliability issue under harsh environment, e.g., automotive underhood, larger package size, or higher temperature and temperature gradient due to increase in power dissipation of the package. Numerous studies in BGA solder joint deformation and reliability under thermal and mechanical loadings can be found in the literature, e.g., Borgesen et al. (1993), Choi et al. (1993), Guo et al. (1993), Ju et al. (1994), Lau et al. (1994) Lau (1995), and Heinrich et al. (1995). Also, reliability prediction models have been developed by, e.g., Darveaux et al. (1995) and Darveaux (1996). The present study focuses on the application of a detailed nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA) to studying the thermal cyclic response of solder joints in two particular BGA packages, full-matrix and perimeter. Both time-independent plasticity and time-dependent effect, i.e., creep and relaxation, are considered in the constitutive equations of solder joint to evaluate the discrepancy in the results of life prediction. The critical solder joint is identified, and the locations that are most susceptible to fatigue failure in the critical joint are discussed. Some limitations in computation and reliability prediction are also discussed.