As technology progresses towards smaller electronic packages, thermo-mechanical considerations pose a challenge to package designers. One area of difficulty is the ability to predict the fatigue life of the solder connections. To do this one must be able to accurately model the thermo-mechanical performance of the electronic package. As the solder ball size decreases, it becomes difficult to determine the performance of the package with traditional methods such as the use of strain gages. This is due to the fact that strain gages become limited in size and resolution and lack the ability to measure discreet strain fields as the solder ball size decreases. A solution to the limitations exhibited in strain gages is the use of Moiré interferometry. Moiré interferometry utilizes optical interferometry to measure small, in-plane relative displacements and strains with high sensitivity. Moiré interferometry is a full field technique over the application area, whereas a strain gage gives an average strain for the area encompassed by the gage. This ability to measure full field strains is useful in the analysis of electronic package interconnections; especially when used to measure strains in the solder ball corners, where failure is known to originate. While the improved resolution of the data yielded by the method of Moiré interferometry results in the ability to develop more accurate models, that is not to say the process is simple and without difficulties of it's own. Moiré interferometry is inherently susceptible to error due to experimental and environmental effects; therefore, it is vital to generate a reliable experimental procedure that provides repeatable results. This was achieved in this study by emulating and modifying established procedures to meet our specific application. The developed procedure includes the preparation of the specimen, the replication and transfer of the grids, the use of the PEMI, interpretation of results, and validation of data by finite element analysis using ANSYS software. The data obtained maintained uniformity to the extent required by the scope of this study, and potential sources of error have been identified and should be the subject of further research.

The characterization of the material’s deformation is nowadays common in transmission electron microscopy. The ability to resolve the crystalline lattice enables the strain to be linked with the deformation of the crystal unit cells. Imaging the crystal unit cells imposes the sampling scheme to oversample the resolved crystal periodicities and, thus, limits the field of view (FOV) of the micrograph. Therefore, alternative methods were developed (electron diffraction and holography) to overcome the FOV limitation. The method presented in this thesis is part of the large FOV challenge. Its principle is based on the coherent interference of the sampling grid with the crystalline lattices of the material in scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). The interference results to a set of Moiré fringes embedding the structural properties of the material such as a strain field. The STEM Moiré hologram (SMH) formation can be elegantly described using the concept of Moiré sampling in STEM imaging. The STEM Moiré fringes reveals to be undersampling artefacts commonly known as aliasing artefacts. The SMH is, therefore, violating the sampling theorem and is not a proper representation of the crystal unit cells. However, an oversampled representation can be recovered from the SMH using a set of prior knowledge. The SMH becomes suitable to characterize the 2D strain field giving birth to a new dedicated method, called STEM Moiré GPA (SMG), that is using the Geometric Phase Analysis method on the SMH directly. After detailing the theory of SMG, the technique is validated experimentally by comparing it to other strain characterization methods and to Finite Element Method simulations. The characteristics of SMG (resolution, precision and accuracy) and its limits are then detailed. Finally, the SMG method is applied on semiconductor devices to highlight the typical capabilities of the technique. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)