Effect of metal finishing fabricated by electro and Electroless plating process on reliability performance of 30μm-pitch solder micro bump interconnection

Recently, three dimensional integration circuits technology has received much attention because of the demands of gradually increasing functionality and performance in microelectronic packaging for different types of electronic devices. For 3D chip stacking, high density interconnections are required in high-performance electronic products. Though the bumping process used could be either electroplating or electroless plating for fine pitch solder micro bumps, its process effect on the reliability performances of micro joints still needs to be clarified from the microstructural point of view, especially for the fine pitch solder micro bump interconnections. In this study, we discussed the effect of Ni/Au metal finishing fabricated by electro- and electroless plating on the reliability properties of 30μm-pitch lead-free solder micro interconnections. Palladium layer was chosen to evaluate its influence on the reliability response of fine-pitch solder micro joints with electroless Ni/Au surface finishing. The chip-to-chip test vehicle having more than 3000 solder micro bumps with a bump pitch of 30μm was used in this study. Two types of metal finishing, electroplating Ni/Au and electroless plating Ni/Pd/Au, were chosen and fabricated on the silicon carrier. In silicon carrier, the thickness of Ni layer was 2~3 μm while that of electroplating and electroless plating Au layer was 0.5μm and 0.02μm respectively. The thickness of Pd layer within the electroless Ni/Pd/Au structure was 0.05~0.1μm. The silicon chip with a solder micro bump structure of Cu/Ni/SnAg having a thickness of 5μm/3μm/5μm was used for C2C bonding. We adopted the fluxless thermocompression process for both types of micro joints and then the chip stack was assembled by capillary-type underfill. Temperature cycling test (TCT) and electromigration test (EM) were conducted to assess the effect of metal finishing on the reliability properties of those solder micro bump interconnections. The reliability results revealed that the thickness of Au layer would apparently influence the microstructure evolution within the solder micro bump interconnection after bonding process though the micro joints with thick Au layer could pass the 1000 cycles TCT. The micro joints with complicated interface reaction resulted from the thicker Au layer might lead a negative effect on the long-term reliability properties while the Pd layer would enhance the wetting ability of solder micro bump during joining. The results of EM reliability test displayed that both types of the micro joints had excellent electromigration resistance under the testing condition of 0.08A/150°C. The activated IMC growth within the micro joint during EM testing was the major reason for this superior property. This investigated completely presented the effect of metal finishing by electro- and electroless bumping processes on the reliability properties of fine pitch solder micro bump joints.