Comparison of experimental methods for the extraction of the elastic modulus of molding compounds used in IC packaging

Knowing the Young’s modulus of a plastic molding compound and how it evolves over time and with temperature provides valuable information since it has an important impact on the thermo-mechanical stress that is imposed on a packaged IC. This paper demonstrates the utilization of two techniques that can offer fast, easy and straightforward methods for Young’s modulus extraction of plastic molding compound materials. Both techniques are additionally compared with the nano-indentation (NI) method. Each of these techniques have their advantages and limitations, and therefore, the criterion to select the most appropriate technique for Young’s modulus extraction depends on several parameters like sample preparation time, measurement time and the number of measurements needed to have good statistics. The originality of this study lies in the fact that the evaluation of these methods focuses not only on Young’s modulus extraction from bare molding compound material, but also from molding compounds on packaged IC’s as well.

► Two methods evaluated for Young’s modulus extraction of plastic molding compounds.
► Bending tests and SAM compared to the nano-indentation method.
► Measurements done on both bare molding compound material and packaged IC’s.
► Criteria: sample preparation time, measurement time, data analysis, application.
► The best overall results obtained with the SAM technique.