Temperature Dependent Viscoplastic Simulation of Controlled Collapse Solder Joint Under Thermal Cycling

Solder is being extensively used in electronic packages for both electrical and mechanical connection. Solder joints are subjected to severe operating conditions and hence their reliability is very critical for the packages. Simulation is very effective for understanding, predicting and design improvement of electronic packages where solder is the prime joiner, however all the material response complexities of solder over the temperature regime it is subjected to should be modelled. Solder in electronic components very often operates at 0.6 to 0.8 times it’s melting point. In this regime the time dependent material response (creep and stress relaxation) is very significant and can no longer be ignored. Also the plastic and creep responses of solder alloys have a very strong dependence on temperature. A nonlinear finite element based methodology has been developed for simulation of solder alloy over its full regime of material behavior, also accounting for the strong temperature dependence. This includes elastic, time independent plastic, and time dependent viscoplastic response. The methodology has been used for predicting the response of a flip chip with 95Pb5 percent Sn peripheral bumps subjected to thermal cycling. Correlation is observed between the location of failure in the bump and the maximum inelastic strain. The importance of doing a multicycle simulation is demonstrated and a direction is indicated for the bump size modification for flip chip bump design improvements for greater reliability.