Impact of Mechanical Property Degradation and Intermetallic Compound Formation on Electromigration-Oriented Failure of a Flip-Chip Solder Joint

Due to the increased complexity and optimization in microprocessor packaging from 2D to 3D packages, the size of solder joints is being reduced significantly. This trend currently leads to an increased amount of current density across flip-chip solder joints as well as microbumps and causes electromigration-oriented void formation and subsequent failure of the solder joints. It has been observed from literature that solder material undergoes microstructure evolution and subsequent degradation of mechanical properties under isothermal aging conditions. The current study is based on the effects of material property degradation due to thermal aging of flip-chip Sn-Ag-Cu (SAC) solder joints on electromigration-oriented failure. Finite element analysis has been used to analyze the diffusion characteristics of a SAC solder joint under isothermal aging conditions of 100 degrees C for a period of 1-20 days, and electromigration simulation has been performed at two different temperatures of 100 degrees C and 125 degrees C for 100 h at an input current range of 0.01-0.05 A. The effect of intermetallic compound (IMC) layer thickness is analyzed to reveal the impact on electromigration-oriented failure in isothermally 60 days long aged solder bumps. Results have revealed that resistance to electromigration-oriented failure is higher in the case of aged components compared to unaged components along with the increment of time to failure with IMC formation in the SAC solder joint.