Effects of Thermal Cycle Conditions on Thermal Fatigue Life of Substrate With Cu Through-Hole

The Cu through-hole is a structure of electroplated Cu thin film, which penetrates the substrate. Because of the mismatch of the thermal expansion coefficient between the Cu thin film and the substrate along the thickness direction, thermal strain occurs repeatedly at the Cu through-hole part with the variation of temperature. As a result, the thermal fatigue failure of Cu through-hole part is one of the failure modes of the substrate. In this study, the effects of thermal cycle conditions on the thermal fatigue life of the substrate with Cu through-hole were investigated by thermal cycle tests and Finite Element Method (FEM)-based analyses. Thermal cycle tests of the substrate with Cu through-hole were conducted under different thermal conditions. The effects of dwell time, temperature range and maximum temperature were investigated. Among these factors, the maximum temperature shows the greatest influence on the thermal fatigue life of Cu through-hole part. FEM-based thermal cycle analyses were also carried out to understand the effects of thermal cycle conditions. The glass cloth structures of the substrate should be considered in the analyses, because their rigid properties probably affect the generation of the failure at the through-hole part. In this study, glass cloth structures were modeled by taking advantage of a homogenization method. On the other hand, the inelastic constitutive model of the electroplated Cu thin film was introduced in the analyses in order to describe the creep deformation during the dwell process of thermal cycles. The inelastic strain range of the Cu through-hole during thermal cycles was calculated from the analysis results and the effectiveness of the Coffin-Manson law was evaluated. The results showed that the fatigue life prediction using the Coffin-Manson model was effective in the range of the same substrate thickness and the same maximum temperature. Additionally the influences of material model and material constants of epoxy resin were investigated to expand the range of application of the fatigue life prediction.