Light emitting diodes (LEDs) are today standard and mature light sources. They have several key advantages, like small size, low energy consumption and long lifetime. However, high reliability of the LED system is required to achieve long lifetime of the light source. Thermo-mechanical stress due to temperature cycle causes failure of electronic systems. The electronic component itself or the interconnect device, e.g. printed circuit board (PCB) might fail. In many cases, the weakest link is found to be the solder interconnect between package and the board. Cracking of the interconnect causes an open contact and the system fails.
In this paper we compare the existing methods to investigate LED interconnect failures during temperature cycle tests like the simple “light-on-test”, electric resistance measurement and the shear test. We describe and introduce the transient thermal analysis as a measurement method. We present the first reliability data analysis with transient thermal analysis of ceramic high power LED packages on Al-IMS during air to air thermal shock test (−40°C to +125°C) and correlate it with cross sections. We demonstrate the sensitivity of the thermal analysis to detect solder joint failures of the assembly. We compare the results with electric resistance measurements and light on tests and show that the resolution is significantly higher compared to the methods applied today. The sensitivity of the method enables us to detect the crack in a solder joint much earlier than the final failure of the joint, i.e. the open contact.
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