FEM analysis with DSC modeling for materials in chip-substrate systems

In electronic packaging, solder joints in surface mount technology are used for not only electrical connections, but mechanical connections as well. Due to the mismatch of the coefficients of thermal expansion of different components in chip-substrate systems, solder joints under thermal cycles could develop thermal stress inside and therefore experience fatigue failure after a certain number of load cycles. In this work, the disturbed state concept (DSC) model, a unified and hierarchical approach to model a variety of materials such as soils, rocks, ceramics, metals, and alloys, was appropriately modified to characterize a 63Sn-37Pb solder. This includes a modified hardening function that eliminates some inconsistency in the HISS-delta0 model when the bonding stress is nonzero, and a different fully adjusted state that is properly assumed from test data on the 63Sn-37Pb solder. A generalized computer procedure was then developed for 3-D constitutive level back prediction with the DSC model. In addition, a modified computer procedure for parameter determination was proposed and implemented to calculate the relative intact stress-strain curve for simple shear test data automatically. The above procedures for parameter determination and back prediction were used to model simple shear tests of the 63Sn-37Pb solder at different temperatures and strain rates. Based on material properties determined from test data at different combinations of temperature and strain rate, constitutive level back predictions were performed for each test data set using (1) specific material properties and (2) temperature and rate dependent material properties. Further, a 3-D DSC FEA (finite element analysis) program was used to simulate the same stress-strain behaviors of solder joints at different temperatures and strain rates. The results from back prediction and 3-D FEA simulation show that the test data have been better characterized by the modified DSC model. Moreover, 2-D and 3-D DSC FEA programs were employed to study the fatigue failure of a 144-Pin PBGA solder ball under cyclic thermomechanical loading. An accelerated-approximate procedure was incorporated into the 3-D FEA program to reduce the computational effort for fatigue analysis. Results of 3-D FEAs show that the 3-D geometry of a solder joint has significant influences on its fatigue life. The comparison of 2-D and 3-D results with the test results for the 144-pin PBGA solder ball indicates the FEA results are consistent with the initiation of failure observed in laboratory test. In addition, failure criteria based on fractional volume were also proposed for 2-D and 3-D FEAs by calibration of the available test results