SOLDER JOINT RELIABILITY

The role of solder in electronic packages has expanded. In advanced designs, solder is an electrical inter-connect, a mechanical bond, and must often serve as a thermal conduit to remove heat from joined devices. Additionally, interconnects become more critical as die size, chip-carrier size, and number of inputs/ outputs (I/Os) increase, while solder joint size and cost decreases. This paper discusses reliability of solder interconnects for electronic packages and describe the methodologies used to prediction reliability. The specific reliability issues discussed will be thermomechanical stress (fatigue), creep behaviour, and interfacial intermetallics aging.