Investigation of electromigration reliability of redistribution lines in wafer-level chip-scale packages

•Electromigration lifetime of Ti/Al/Ti and Ti/Cu/Cu RDLs were investigated.•Three-dimensional electrothermal coupling analysis was employed in analysis.•Electromigration reliability was calibrated based on the Black’s equation.•Activation energies of Ti/Al/Ti and Ti/Cu/Cu RDLs were calculated.•Electromigration-induced RDL failure shows a form of grain boundary diffusion.

Wafer-level chip-scale packages (WLCSPs) have become subject to the same drive for miniaturization as all electronic packages. The I/O count is increasing and ball pitch is shrinking at the expense of trace pitch and in turn, current densities are increasing. This leads to current crowding and Joule heating in the vicinity of solder joints and under bump metallurgy (UBM) structures where resistance values change significantly. These phenomena are responsible for structural damage of redistribution line (RDL)/UBM and UBM/solder interconnects due to ionic diffusion or electromigration. In this work, sputtered Al and electroplated Cu RDLs were examined and quantified by three-dimensional electrothermal coupling analysis. Results provide a guideline for estimating maximum allowable currents and electromigration lifetime.