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Mitigation of Reliability Risks Associated with Accelerated Thermal Cycling and High Current Density Electromigration in Ball Grid Array Solder Joints

Ball Grid Array (BGA) solder joints are an array of solder alloy spheres sandwiched between package substrate and printed circuit board (PCB). These solder joints provide electrical connections and mechanical integrity to the assembly of package and PCB. Upcoming advanced packaging applications will involve heavier components, higher service temperatures and higher current densities, which will result in additional stresses on BGA joints accelerating their failure. Additionally, mismatch in the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) between the substrate, solder balls and PCB results in fracture near the solder-substrate interface posing a reliability risk. Moreover, higher current densities at elevated temperatures, also aggravate electromigration (EM) failure. It is important to mitigate these reliability risks associated with accelerated thermal cycling (ATC) and high current density EM.
In this dissertation, various approaches to improve the ATC and EM reliability of packages have been investigated. First, BGA solder alloy composition was modified by doping Bi in the conventionally used Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu (SAC305) and Sn-4.0Ag-0.5Cu (SAC405) alloys to improve the mechanical strength of the solder joints. The effect of 1-3% Bi doping on aging induced changes in hardness, creep strength, tensile strength, viscoplasticity and microstructure was studied. Second, a reliability improvement measure (RIM) to mitigate fatigue failure of BGA solder joints was investigated. The microstructures of solder joints subjected to ATC were investigated for fatigue fractures and recrystallization of grains. Third, RIM measures to prevent EM failure of packages caused by high current density were investigated. The ability of novel substrate designs in prolonging time to failure of solder joints in packages along with EM failure mechanisms have been discussed. This dissertation thus provides insights on the efficacy and mechanisms of various reliability improvement measures to mitigate the ATC and EM reliability risks in BGA solder joints to guide future packaging design.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd2023-1493
Date01 January 2024
CreatorsShukla, Vishnu R
PublisherSTARS
Source SetsUniversity of Central Florida
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceGraduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

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