Numerical investigation and experimental validation of residual stresses building up in microelectronics packaging

• A two stage numerical scheme for determination of residual stresses in microelectronics encapsulation is proposed.
• The numerically estimated residual stress values are verified using the proposed novel experimental technique.
• It is experimentally confirmed that the curing stage is not stress free.
• The curing induced stress is lower than the cooling induced stress.
• The maximum residual stresses are expected to occur at the die corners.

This paper comprises the numerical approach and the experimental validation technique developed to obtain the residual stresses building up during encapsulation process of integrated circuits. Residual stresses can be divided into cure and cooling induced parts. The curing originated stress had been mostly neglected in the literature and a special attention had always been given to detection of the thermal induced stress. In this study, both of the residual stresses, evolving during packaging, were investigated independently. The material behavior of the epoxy molding compound, EMC, was determined by the series of characterization experiments. The volumetric behavior of the EMC was investigated using PVT analysis, in which the total cure shrinkage of an initially uncured sample and the coefficient of thermal expansion of the same sample after full conversion were determined. The cure kinetics was studied using differential scanning calorimetry, DSC. The dynamic mechanical behavior was examined by dynamic mechanical analysis, DMA, at a fixed frequency. Besides, the time dependent behavior of the EMC was also determined by implementing the time–temperature superposition, TTS, test set-up in DMA. The shift factor was modeled using the combination of the WLF equation and the polynomial of second degree. The constitutive equations were developed based on the applied boundary conditions and the epoxy compound's mechanical behavior in the respective stage. A two dimensional numerical model was constructed using a commercially available finite element software package. For the experimental verification of the numerically obtained residual stresses a flexible board with the stress measuring chip was encapsulated. The real-time stress data were measured during the encapsulation. Using this technique, the in-plane stresses and the temperature changes during the die encapsulation were measured successfully. Furthermore, the measured stress data was compared with the predicted numerical results of the cure and the thermal stages, independently.