Laser soldering of flip-chips

A novel process for laser soldering of flip-chips on transparent printed circuit board assemblies is presented. The experiments were carried out on silver test patterns printed on glass wafers using a roller-type gravure offset printing method. The contact pads, where the bumps of the flip-chips are positioned, were covered with a thin layer of additional solder paste. The aligned samples (solder pad—solder paste—chip bump) were illuminated through the glass substrate using an Ar+ laser beam (λ=488nm, P=0.6–3.0W, d=100μm at 1/e) to heat the printed pad and melt the solder paste, thus forming a joint between the printed pad and the chip bump. The heat-affected zone was modeled using computer-assisted finite element method. The solder joint cross-sections were analyzed using optical and electron microscopy as well as energy dispersive X-ray element analyses. The laser-soldered joints were of good mechanical and electrical quality and the process proved to be suitable for manufacturing customized circuit prototypes.