Experimental damage mechanics of microelectronic solder joints under fatigue loading

Fatigue damage is a progressive process of material degradation. The objective of this study is to experimentally qualify the damage mechanism in solder joints in electronic packaging under thermal fatigue loading. Another objective of this paper is to show that damage mechanism under thermal cycling and mechanical cycling is very different. Elastic modulus degradation under thermal cycling, which is considered as a physically detectable quantity of material degradation, was measured by nano-indenter. It was compared with tendency of inelastic strain accumulation of solder joints in ball grid array (BGA) package under thermal cycling, which was measured by Moire interferometry. Fatigue damage evolution in solder joints with traditional load-drop criterion was also investigated by shear-strain hysteresis loops from strain-controlled cyclic shear testing of thin layer solder joints. Load-drop behavior was compared with elastic modulus degradation of solder joints under thermal cycling. Following conventional Coffin-Manson approach, S-N curve was obtained from isothermal fatigue testing with load-drop criterion. Coffin-Manson curves obtained from strain controlled mechanical tests were used to predict fatigue life of solder joints. In this paper it is shown that this approach underestimates the fatigue life by an order of magnitude. Results obtained in this project indicate that thermal fatigue and isothermal mechanical fatigue are completely different damage mechanism for microstructurally evolving materials.