Characterization of the shear test method with low melting point In–48Sn solder joints

The ball shear tests were investigated in terms of effects of test parameters, i.e. shear height and shear speed, with an experimental and non-linear finite element analysis for evaluating the solder joint integrity of area array packages. A representative low melting point solder, In–48Sn, was examined in this work. The substrate was a common solder mask defined (SMD) type with solder bond pad openings of 460 μm in diameter. The microstructural investigations were carried out using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and the intermetallic compounds (IMCs) were identified with energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) and electron probe micro analyzer (EPMA). Shear tests were conducted with the two varying test parameters. It could be observed that increasing shear height, at fixed shear speed, has the effect of decreasing shear force, while the shear force increased with increasing shear speed at fixed shear height. Too high shear height could cause some bad effects on the test results such as unexpected high standard deviation values or shear tip sliding from the solder ball surface. The low shear height conditions were favorable for screening the type of brittle interfacial fractures or the degraded layers in the interfaces. The sensitivity of shear speed in In–48Sn solder is largely higher than those of Sn-based solders.