Aging effects on fracture behavior of 63Sn37Pb eutectic solder during tensile tests under the SEM

This study investigates the influence of aging treatment on fracture behavior of Sn–Pb eutectic solder alloys at different loading rate regime during tensile tests under the scanning electron microscope. In high homologous temperature, the solder exhibit the creep behavior that could be confirmed through the phenomena of grain boundary sliding (GBS) to both as-cast and aged specimens. Owing to the large grain scale after high temperature storage, boundary behavior was limited to some extent for the difficulty in grain rotation and boundary migration. Instead, drastic intragranular deformation occurred. Also, the phase coarsening weakened the combination between lead-rich phase and tin matrix. Consequently, surface fragmentation was detected for the aged specimens. Furthermore, the fracture mechanism changed from intergranular dominated to transgranular dominated with increasing loading rate to both specimens during early stage.