Material property effects on solder failure analyses

The effects of material properties modeling on the solder failure analyses by numerical simulations are studied. The packaging structure of plastic ball grid array on printed circuit board was modeled. Two different types of molding compounds and two different types of substrates were employed and combined for the plastic ball grid array package modeling. The material properties were assumed as temperature dependent elastic and viscoelastic, and finite element method was used to calculate and analyze the strain energy densities of the solder balls. The chip warpage was also studied, and related with the solder ball reliability analyses by discussing the viscoelastic characteristics of the materials and their influences on the deformations. The results showed that the warpage developments of the packaging structure showed very different behaviors, and the mechanism of the strain energy density accumulations in the solder balls were also different depending on the material properties modeling and their combinations. This study demonstrates that appropriate modeling of the material properties is critical for the interpretation and understanding the microelectronics reliability mechanisms.