New Accelerating Test Methods for Board Level Solder Joints and Thermal Caused Failure Mechanisms in High Temperature Electronics

New accelerating test methods for high temperature electronics in automotive applications have to be developed due to the reached temperature limits of the materials, the increased quality targets and the long qualification test time with conventional test methods. New test methods can be created on the basis of the "physics of failure" approach. New ways which increase the additional stress on specific failure mechanisms parallel to the conventional test methods are presented with practical examples. For instance, well defined bending loads for second level solder joints as an additional equivalent stress to the conventional thermal cycle stress and the color change of the solder resist of the printed circuit boards (PCB) as a physical indicator to forecast reliability behavior of dominant failure mechanisms