Flip chip solder joint reliability analysis using viscoplastic and elastic-plastic-creep

Both elastic-plastic-creep and viscoplastic constitutive models may be used for inelastic deformation analysis of solder joints. In this paper, a phenomenological approach using elastic-plastic-creep analysis and an Anand viscoplastic model is reported for solder joint reliability. Flip chip soldered assemblies with 63Sn-37Pb solder joints were subjected to a thermal cyclic loading condition of -40 to +125 degrees C to assess the solder joint fatigue performance. In the finite-element modeling, the viscoplastic strain energy density per cycle obtained from the viscoplastic analysis is compared with the inelastic (plastic and creep) strain energy density per cycle calculated from the elastic-plastic-creep analysis. The inelastic (plastic+creep and viscoplastic) strain energy density extracted from the finite-element analysis results, at the critical solder joint location, were used as a failure parameter for solder fatigue models employed. It was found that the predicted solder joint fatigue life has a better correlation to the first failure or first-time-to-failure result.