Investigation of package warpage effect on TC solder joint reliability

Thermal fatigue of solder joints is critical to electronic package performance and life consideration. Failure caused by device warpage (WPG) problems is a major challenge with demands for miniaturization and system integration in a faster, better, and cheaper environment. This paper discusses a relationship between warpage and thermal fatigue life time and failure mechanism under thermal cycling (TC), especially for samples with large warpage. A laser-based surface profiling technique was used to characterize the package warpage. Device warpage is a function of temperature, and it is tested by shadow moiré. Elastic-plastic-creep constitutive model was built to confirm critical stress location during TC, and in-plane moiré was used for correlating the simulation model. Experiment results reveal that component warpage change has an important effect on TC lifetime.