Study of flip chip solder joint cracks under temperature cycling using a laser ultrasound inspection system

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lizheng Zhang ◽  
I.C. Ume ◽  
J. Gamalski ◽  
K.-P. Galuschki
Keyword(s):  
Solder Joint ◽  
Flip Chip ◽  
Temperature Cycling ◽  
Inspection System ◽  
Laser Ultrasound ◽  
Ultrasound Inspection

Board-Level Solder Joint Reliability Study of Land Grid Array Packages for RF Application Using a Laser Ultrasound Inspection System

2010 ◽  
Vol 132 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Yang ◽  
Lizheng Zhang ◽  
I. Charles Ume ◽  
Camil Ghiu ◽  
George White
Keyword(s):  
Solder Joint ◽  
Thermal Cycling ◽  
Thermal Loading ◽  
Inspection System ◽  
Laser Ultrasound ◽  
Solder Joint Reliability ◽  
Joint Reliability ◽  
Joint Quality ◽  
Ultrasound Inspection ◽  
Board Level

Microelectronics packaging technology has evolved from through-hole, and bulk configuration to surface-mount, and small-profile ones. Today’s electronics industry is also transiting from SnPb to Pb-free to meet environmental requirements. Land grid array (LGA) package has been becoming popular in portable electronics in terms of low profile on the printed wiring boards and direct Pb-free assembly process compatibility. With the package profile shrinking and operating power increasing, solder joint quality and reliability has become a major concern in microelectronics manufacturing. The solder joint failure at the package level or board level will cause electronic devices not to function during service. In this paper, board-level solder joint reliability of the LGA packages under thermal loading is studied through thermal cycling tests. A novel laser ultrasound-interferometric system developed by the authors is applied to inspect solder joint quality during the thermal cycling tests. While the laser ultrasound inspection technique has been successfully applied to flip chips and chip scale packages, this study is the first application of this technique to overmolded packages. In this study, it is found out that the LGA packages can withstand 1000 temperature cycles without showing crack initiation or other failure mechanisms in the solder joints. The laser ultrasound inspection results match the visual observation and X-ray inspection results. This study demonstrates the feasibility of this system to solder joint quality inspection of overmolded packages. In particular, the devices constituting the objective of this study are radio frequency modules, which are encapsulated through overmolding and are mounted on a typical four-layer FR4 board through LGA terminations.

Detection of Solder Bump Defects in Electronic Packages Using Local Temporal Coherence Analysis of Laser Ultrasonic Signals

2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Yang ◽  
I. Charles Ume
Keyword(s):  
Solder Bump ◽  
Temporal Coherence ◽  
Acoustic Microscopy ◽  
Inspection System ◽  
Laser Ultrasound ◽  
Electronic Packages ◽  
Surface Mount ◽  
Flip Chips ◽  
Solder Bumps ◽  
Ultrasound Inspection

Microelectronics packaging technology has evolved from through-hole and bulk configurations to surface-mount and small-profile configurations. Surface mount devices, such as flip chip packages, chip scale packages, and ball grid arrays, use solder bump interconnections between them and substrates/printed wiring boards. Solder bumps, which are hidden between the device and the substrate/board, are difficult to inspect. A solder bump inspection system was developed using laser ultrasound and interferometric techniques. This system has been successfully applied to detect solder joint/bump defects, including missing, misaligned, open, and cracked solder joints/bumps in flip chips, chip scale packages, and multilayer ceramic capacitors. This system uses a pulsed Nd:YAG laser to induce ultrasound in the electronic packages in the thermoelastic regime; it then measures the transient out-of-plane displacement response on the package surface using the interferometric technique. This paper presents a local temporal coherence (LTC) analysis of laser ultrasound signals and compares it to previous signal-processing methods, including error ratio and correlation coefficient methods. The results showed that LTC analysis increased measurement accuracy and sensitivity for inspecting solder bump defects in electronic packages. Laser ultrasound inspection results are also compared with X-ray and C-mode scanning acoustic microscopy results. In particular, this paper discusses defect detection for 6.35×6.35×0.6 mm3 flip chips and flip chips (“SiMAF;” Siemens AG) with lead-free solder bumps.

Effect of temperature cycling on reliability of flip chip solder joint

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xueming Jiang ◽  
Pengrong Lin ◽  
Yuezhong Song ◽  
Yingzhuo Huang ◽  
Binhao Lian ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Solder Joint ◽  
Flip Chip ◽  
Temperature Cycling ◽  
Effect Of Temperature

Void Inspection in Lead-Free Solder Bumps on Ball Grid Array (BGA) Packages Using Laser Ultrasound Technique

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Gong ◽  
I. Charles Ume
Keyword(s):  
Ball Grid Array ◽  
Lead Free ◽  
Inspection System ◽  
Laser Ultrasound ◽  
Lead Free Solder ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Bga Packages ◽  
Solder Bumps ◽  
Free Solder ◽  
Ultrasound Inspection

Solder joint voids are usually formed by the entrapped gas bubbles during the reflow process, and are common in all surface mount applications. It is a controversial issue on the reliability of the solder joint, however the consensus is that voiding is acceptable at low contents, while excessive voiding affects mechanical properties, and decreases strength, ductility and fatigue life of the interconnections. X-ray is the most widely used technique to evaluate the voids, including the size and occurrence frequency. In this paper, a laser ultrasound and interferometer inspection system is used to inspect the voids in lead-free solder bumps in ball grid array (BGA) packages. This system uses a pulsed Nd:YAG laser to induce ultrasound in the chip packages in the thermoelastic regime; and laser interferometer is used to measure the transient out-of-plane displacement response of the package surface to the laser irradiation. The quality of solder bumps is evaluated by analyzing the transient responses. In this work, voids were intentionally created by adding the volatile flux during the assembly process. By controlling the volume of flux dip, three different levels of voiding were proposed: void-free, relatively low and relatively high. The presence of voids in the solder bumps was first verified using 2-D X-ray techniques. Meanwhile, the built-in image-processing software in X-ray tool measured the void fraction to quantify the level of voiding. Then the laser ultrasound inspection system was used to evaluate the voids in these samples. By comparing the vibration responses from voided samples and void-free samples, it was found that the laser ultrasound inspection system is capable to differentiate samples with relatively high voiding from void-free samples while the relatively low voiding was below the resolution of the inspection system. Lastly, a further comparison between the void-free and voided solder bumps was carried out by the destructive cross-section technique. The comparisons between these three solder bump evaluation methods will be presented in this paper.

Digital Signal Processing in a Novel Flip Chip Solder Joint Defects Inspection System

2003 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheng Liu ◽  
I. Charles Ume
Keyword(s):  
Signal Processing ◽  
Solder Joint ◽  
Time Domain ◽  
Flip Chip ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Digital Signal ◽  
Inspection System ◽  
Spectrum Estimation ◽  
Joint Quality ◽  
Signal Processing Methods

Digital signal processing methods in a novel flip chip solder joint quality inspection system are presented. Laser ultrasound and interferometric system is a new approach for solder joint inspection. It has many advantages such as being noncontact, nondestructive, fast, accurate and low cost. Furthermore, it can be used on-line in assembly line or off-line during process development. In this system, signals recorded are ultrasound waveforms. Because noise is present, signal processing methods are developed to increase signal-to-noise ratio, and to extract solder joint quality information from those waveforms. Signals are analyzed both in frequency domain and time domain. In the frequency domain, digital filtering and Bartlett power spectrum estimation method are used, and defects can be detected from the frequency shifting. A series of experimental results are presented, showing that power spectrum estimation can greatly increase the signal-to-noise ratio than when only time domain averaging is used. This speeds up the data acquisition and analysis process. In the time domain, “error ratio” is used to measure the difference between a good chip and a chip with defect. Results indicate that error ratio method not only can detect whether a chip has solder joint defect or not, but can also locate that defect. Overall, signal processing plays a very important role in this flip chip quality inspection system.

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