A Comparison of Thermal Stress/Strain Behavior of Elliptical/Round Solder Pads

As electronic packaging technology moving to the CSP, wafer level packaging, fine pitch BGA (ball grid array) and high density interconnections, the wireability of the PCB/substrate and soldering technology are as important as reliability issues. In this work, a comparison of elliptical/round pads of area array type packages has been studied for soldering, reliability, and wireability requirements. The objective of this research is to develop numerical models for predicting reflow shapes of solder joint under elliptical/round pad boundary conditions and to study the reliability issue of the solder joint. In addition, a three-dimensional solder liquid formation model is developed for predicting the geometry, the restoring force, the wireability, and the reliability of solder joints in an area array type interconnections (e.g., ball grid array, flip chip) under elliptical and round pad configurations. In general, the reliability of the solder joints is highly dependent on the thermal-mechanical behaviors of the solder and the geometry configuration of the solder ball. These reliability factors include standoff height/contact angle of the solder joint, and the geometry layout/material properties of the package. An optimized solder pad design cannot only lead to a good reliability life of the solder joint but also can achieve a better wireability of the substrate. Furthermore, the solder reflow simulation used in this study is based on an energy minimization engine called Surface Evolver and the finite element software ABAQUS is used for thermal stress/strain nonlinear analysis.