Numerical analysis of lead-free solder joints: effects of thermal cycling and electromigration

To meet the requirements of miniaturization and multifunction in microelectronics, understanding of their reliability and performance has become an important research subject in order to characterise electronics served under various loadings. Along with the demands of the increasing miniaturization of electronic devices, various properties and the relevant thermo-mechanical-electrical response of the lead-free solder joints to thermal cycling and electro-migration become the critical factors, which affect the service life of microelectronics in different applications. However, due to the size and structure of solder interconnects in microelectronics, traditional methods based on experiments are not applicable in the evaluation of their reliability under complex joint loadings. This thesis presents an investigation, which is based on finite-element method, into the performance of lead-free solder interconnects under thermal fatigue and electro-migration, specifically in the areas as follows: (1) the investigation of thermal-mechanical performance and fatigue-life prediction of flip-chip package under different sizes to achieve a further understanding of IMC layer and size effects of a flip chip package under thermal cycling; (2) the establishment of a numerical method, simulating void-formation/crack-propagation based on the results of finite-element analysis, to allow the prediction of crack evolution and failure time for electro-migration reliability of solder bumps; (3) the establishment of a flow-based algorithm for combination effects of thermal-mechanical and electro-migration that was subsequent implemented in to an FE model to evaluate the reliability assessment of service lives associated with a flip chip package.