Prediction of damage and fatigue life of high-temperature flip chip assembly interconnections at operations

The determination of the real value of damage/plastic work density in solder joints from computer numerical modelling and its usage in fatigue life prediction models based on accumulated energy density is critical to improving the accuracy of predicted life of solder joints. Commercial ANSYS software based on three-dimensional finite element analysis (FEA) was employed to investigate damage of bonded materials of lead-free solder joints in a flip chip (FC48D6.3C457) mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB). The trend behaviour of accumulated damage and fatigue life per cycle over many accelerated thermal cycles (ATCs) are also studied. The solder bumps deformation is modelled using ANAND’s visco-plasticity and the performances of all other materials in the assembly were captured with appropriate material models. It was observed that the difference in stress magnitude and amplitude between inter-metallic compounds (IMCs) at the die side and solder bulk was highest and the presence of IMC in the joints increases bump damage which occurs in three stages during temperature cycle loading. These results demonstrate that while IMC impacts solder joint reliability, the bond at interconnect between IMC at the die side and solder bulk is most vulnerable to fatigue crack initiation and propagation. A new methodology to find accurate solder joint damage is presented. The findings show that average damage from cycle of hysteresis loop stabilisation to cycle of onset of tertiary damage demonstrates potential of being adequate in determining magnitude of the solder joint damage. However, considering that damage evolution is in three-phase, we propose the use of polynomial function to estimate plastic work damage in FC solder joints.