How to estimate solder joint reliability, part 1

Given solder joint quality, there are really only 4 (5 for leaded SJs) critical design parameters DNP, CTE, T, h, (K)

hen I wrote some recent columns on solder joint reliability1,2, I found to my embarrassment and chagrin that in all the years I have been writing this reliability column, I have never addressed the issue of creep-fatigue modeling for solders to estimate their fatigue life for product in the field. It has, of course, received extensive treatment previously, most notably in when discussing industry documents such as IPCSM-785, IPC-D-279 and IPC-97013-5. I gave it a partial treatment in Ref. 1, but it deserves to be more fully discussed. The reliability of the solder attachments of a component can be estimated with the Engelmaier-Wild creep fatigue model in terms of the mean cyclic life

Eq1

for which for near-eutectic SnPb solders

temperatures where creep is significant and independently settled on constant fatigue ductility exponents of m = 0.60.1 for the Manson-Coffin or Coffin-Manson equation. The inverse of m, labeled c, then has values ranging from 1.42 to 2.00, which often has led to the oversimplification of using c=2. Both Equations 1 and 2 are based on the now classical experimental results of Roger Wild, IBM8; Wild, having realized the analytical complications temperature cycling engenders used isothermal cycling at different constant temperatures and different cyclic shapes to determine the temperature- and time-dependence of cyclic creep-fatigue. Equation 2 is the direct consequence of the incomplete creep process during the accelerated test cycles by Roger Wild - or the cycles in any accelerated testing for that matter - with different temperatures and times available at the cyclic load extremes for the creeping of the solder. For the global thermal expansion mismatch between the component and the printed circuit board (PCB), the solder cyclic creep-fatigue damage, D, for leadless solder joints is given by

Werner Engelmaier

How to estimate solder joint reliability, part 1

Eq4

Eq2

where ef = fatigue ductility coefficient, 0.325 for near eutectic SnPb-solder; TSJ = mean cyclic solder joint temperature; tD = half-cycle dwell time in minutes. Equation 1 is sometimes referred to by some as a modified Coffin-Manson equation, even though historically it is incorrect - the form of the equation is simply a powerlaw representation of a straight line in a log-log plot. Both Manson and Coffin6,7 worked only with metals well below 60

Eq3

where F = engineering factor, ~1.2 to 0.7 for filleted SJs, ~1.5 to 1.0 for SJs without fillets; DNP = distance from the neutral point/plane; CTE = CTE-mismatch; T = cyclic temperature excursion; h = solder joint and for solder joints with compliant lead structures is given by

where F = engineering factor 1.0; K = lead stiffness in the direction of the neutral point/plane; A = load-bearing solder joint area; h = solder joint height, since for many leads this height may vary significantly, a convention defining h=1/2 the stencil thickness is frequently adopted; 133 ps = 919 kPa. For typical operating conditions (i.e., TSJ =40C, tD =360 minutes), any combination of parameters in Equations 3 or 4 resulting in D 0.03 will result in a mean cyclic life of about Nf(50%) 500 cycles, D 0.02 of about Nf(50%) 1,000 cycles, D 0.01 about Nf(50%) 5,000 cycles and D 0.005 about Nf(50%) 22,000 cycles. For solder joints with compliant leads, the determination of the solder cyclic creepfatigue damage, D, as shown in Equation 4 is more complicated than it is for leadless solder joints. One has to keep in mind what the creep-fatigue damage, D, represents - it is a measure of the cyclic visco-plastic strain energy. To say this more graphically, it is the area within the cyclic hysteresis loop within the stress-strain diagram. This hysteresis loop is bounded by the cyclic stress range in the stress direction and by the cyclic strain range in the strain direction. This is illustrated in Figures 1 and 2 showing hysteresis loops for both SnPb and SAC solders for accelerated testing and product operation, respectively. For leadless solder joints, the creep-fatigue damage, D, in Equation 3 is represented by the total strain range; the stress range is not a variable - this can be seen by comparing the stress ranges in Figures 1 and 2 since it is limited and thus determined by the yield strength of the solder at a given temperature. Manson and Coffin took advantage of this as www.globalsmt.net

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How to estimate solder joint reliability, part 1 well when they assessed the fatigue damage in the Coffin-Manson equation by just the strain range, a simplification from the more general fatigue equation of Morrow9. For solder joints with compliant lead attachments, this simplification is not possible, since the strain range and stress range vary essentially independently from each other. The reason for this is the fact that compliant leads limit the stress ranges experienced by the solder joints to below the yield strength. This is illustrated in Figure 3, where the red hysteresis loop is representative of a leadless solder joint with a stiffness line determined by the combined compliancy of the solder joint, the package itself and the PCB. The stiffness line limits the maximum stress range at any given temperature during the thermal cycle. Describing the process, on heating, the solder joint experiences a rapid stress increase since it is still at the lower cyclic temperature extreme. As it warms up, its modulus as well as its yield strength decrease, and yielding slows the stress build-up, until the yielding is more rapid than the stress build-up. At that point, the temperature is also high enough for significant creeping to take place. The yielding is replaced by creeping at the stiffness line, where creep will reduce the stress level to near zero with sufficient time at temperature. Here is where the big difference between accelerated test cycles and product operational cycles occurs; accelerated test cycles have dwells of durations insufficient for complete creep, whereas operational cycles typically do have dwells of sufficient duration. The purple hysteresis loop is for a solder joint with a somewhat compliant lead, and the green hysteresis loop for a solder joint with a much more compliant lead. The stress-limiting, and thus creepfatigue damage limiting effect of moving the stiffness lines is clearly evident. In all three cases, the thermal expansion mismatch is the same. In addition to the global thermal expansion mismatch between the component and the printed circuit board (PCB), there is a local thermal expansion mismatch between the solder itself and the materials to which it is soldered10 that can come into play for components with large solder joint areas on ceramic component bodies or Alloy 42/Kovar leads. The solder cyclic creep-fatigue damage, D, for the local thermal expansion mismatch is given by 62

Fig. 1
40 30

95.5Sn-3.9Ag-0.6Cu 62Sn-36Pb-2.0Ag

20

Shear Stress 10 [MPa]

Operational T-cycle: 0 100C 10 min dwells, dwells 0 10 min ramps 388 PBGA -10 35 mm Strain Range

Stress Range

-20 0
8/24/07

3
1

Creep Shear Strain [%]

Figure 1. Cyclic hysteresis loops for cyclic dwells and cyclic temperatures typical of accelerated testing (see IPC-9701, TC1) for both SnPb and SAC solders [Source: J. Lau, et.al., APEX03].

Fig. 2
40 30

95.5Sn-3.9Ag-0.6Cu 62Sn-36Pb-2.0Ag

20

Shear Stress 10 [MPa]

Operational T-cycle: 0 100C 16/8 hr dwells, dwells 0 10 min ramps 388 PBGA -10 35 mm Strain Range

Stress Range

-20 0
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3
2

Creep Shear Strain [%]

Figure 2. Cyclic hysteresis loops for product operational dwells and the temperature excursions shown in Figure 1 for both SnPb and SAC solders. It should be noted that these temperature excursions are larger than typical operational temperature excursions.

Eq5

where L = maximum wetted length of solder joint (diameter/diagonal); Global SMT & Packaging - September 2007

CTE = CTE-mismatch between solder and material soldered to; T = cyclic temperature excursion; L0 = scaling wetting length, 0.1 mm [0.004 inch]. It should be noted that CTE in Equation 5 is the difference in the CTEs of the solder and the surface CTE of the www.globalsmt.net

How to estimate solder joint reliability, part 1

Fig. 3
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Shear Stress [MPa]

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Figure 3Stylized cyclic hysteresis loops for product operational dwells showing the changes in the hysteresis loop areas with the introduction of compliant leads with different lead stiffnesses.

component. That, in most cases, means the effective CTE of the underlying component case material and the metallization. It should also be noted that the local thermal expansion mismatch alone rarely causes the functional failure of a solder joint; as the crack progresses inward, the L-dimension is reduced significantly and the cyclic loading diminishes. Of course, the cracks cause stress concentrations which in the presence of a cyclic global expansion mismatch accelerated the crack growth. Statistical Failure Distribution. The mean creep-fatigue life of solder joints estimated from Equations 1 through 5 determines the life to a failure probability of 50%. While this is a good milestone to design to, it is, of course, very important to have an understanding of when lower failure probabilities, e.g., 1% or 0.1%, which is what you want for your product, would occur for the product. Since the creep-fatigue of solder joints is a wear-out mechanism, it has been found that the Weibull statistical function best describes (i.e., best linearizes) the failure distributions observed. Equation 6 gives the number of cycles to a given failure probability x% based on the mean fatigue life, Nf(50%)

The typical value for the Weibull slope, b, is about 3.0; for accelerated tests the value for b can be larger than this, particularly for more severe tests. However, using the high b -values resulting from accelerated tests is a non-conservative mistake, because they show low failure probabilities for much larger number of cycles than can actually be achieved. Multiple Loading Conditions. From Equations 1 through 5 the mean creep-fatigue life of solder joints subject to a given loading condition can be estimated. In the case of multiple loading conditions of different severity or even different character, such as mechanical loading, which are certainly more common than a single loading condition, the effect of the combined impact of these different loading conditions can best be estimated using an improvement over the Palmgren-Miners linear cumulative damage rule (Equation 7) 11 by determining the Cumulative Damage Ratio, CDR(x%), based on the allowed failure probability rather than the mean life (Equation 8) 12.

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Eq6

Eq7

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How to estimate solder joint reliability, part 1 Connecting Electronics Industries, November 1992. IPC-D-279, Design Guidelines for Reliable Surface Mount Technology Printed Board Assemblies. IPC - Association Connecting Electronics Industries, July 1996. IPC-9701, Performance Test Methods and Qualification Requirements for Surface Mount Solder Attachments. IPC - Association Connecting Electronics Industries, January 2002/IPC-9701A, February 2006. Manson, S.S., Behavior of Materials under Conditions of Thermal Stress, Heat Transfer Symp., Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 1953, pp. 9-76. Coffin, L. F., Jr., "Thermal Stress Fatigue of a Ductile Metal," Trans. ASME, Vol. 76, 1954, pp. 931-950. Wild, R. N., Some Fatigue Properties of Solders and Solder Joints, IBM Tech. Rep. 73Z000421, January 1973. Morrow, J. D., Cyclic Plastic Strain Energy and Fatigue of Metals, ASTM STP 378, ASTM, Philadelphia, 1964, pp. 45-87. Suhir, E., Axisymmetric Elastic Deformation of a Finite Circular Cylinder with Application to Low Temperature Strains and Stresses in Solder Joints, J. Appl. Mech., Vol. 56, No. 2, June 1989, pp. 328-333. Palmgren, A., Die Lebensdauer von Kugellagern, Zeitschrift des VDI, Vol.68, 1924, pp.339-341// Miner, M., Cumulative Damage in Fatigue, J. Applied Mechanics, September 1945, Vol. 67, pp. A159-A164. Engelmaier, W. in IPC-D-279, Design Guidelines for Reliable Surface Mount Technology Printed Board Assemblies. IPC - Association Connecting Electronics Industries, July 1996. Salmela, O., et.al., Re-Calibration of Engelmaier's Model for Leadless, Lead-Free Solder Attachments, Quality and Reliability Engineering International, Vol. 23, No.4, 2007, pp. 415-29. Osterman, M., A. Dasgupta and B. Han, A Strain Range Based Model for Life Assessment of Pb-free SAC Solder Interconnects, Proc. 56th Electronic Component and Technology Conference, May 30-June 2, 2006, pp. 884-890. Osterman, E., A Strain Range Approximation for Estimating Fatigue Life of Lead Free Solder Interconnects Under Temperature Cycle Loading, IPC/JEDEC Global Conference on Lead Free Reliability & Reliability Testing for RoHS Lead Free Electronics, Boston, MA, April 10-11, 2007. Werner Engelmaier will be giving some of his solder joint reliability and PCB reliability workshops at the at IPC Fall Meeting, September 23-27, 2007 in Schaumburg, IL, as well as the JEDEC/IPC Global Conferences on Lead Free Reliability and Reliability Testing for RoHS Lead Free Electronics in Berlin, Germany, October 4-5, 2007, the SMTAI, October 7-11, 2007 in Orlando, FL, and the JEDEC/IPC Global Conferences on Lead Free Reliability and Reliability Testing for RoHS Lead Free Electronics in Austin, TX, December 3-5, 2007; for details of the workshop go to www.engelmaier.com; for more information about the workshops in Schaumburg, Berlin, and Austin contact www.ipc.org and for the SMTAI 2007 workshops www.smta.org. Werner Engelmaier has over 42 years experience in electronic packaging and interconnection technology. Known as Mr. Reliability in the industry, he is the president of Engelmaier Associates, L.C., a firm providing consulting services on reliability, manufacturing and processing aspects of electronic packaging and interconnection technology. He is the chairman of the IPC Main Committee on Product Reliability. He was elected into the IPC Hall of Fame 2003, and was awarded the IPC Presidents Award in 1996 and the IEPS Electronic Packaging Achievement Award in 1987. He also was named a Bell Telephone Laboratories Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in 1986 and an IMAPS Fellow in 1996. More information is available at www.engelmaier.com, and he can be reached at engelmaier@aol.com.

[4]
Eq8

where

Nj = cycles at load level/ condition j; Nf,j(50%) = mean fatigue life at load level/condition j; Nf,j(x%) = fatigue life at load level/ condition j to cumulative failure probability x%. Equation 8 has the advantage over Equation 7 in that it is an equality rather than an inequality, and meeting CDR(x%)=1 means that for this component the reliability goal has been met. System Failure Probability. Of course, any electronic system will consist of a multitude of different components, connectors, sockets, etc. all of which needing to meet reliability goals both individually, and more importantly, collectively. The cumulative system failure probability. FS(N), is given by

[5]

[6]

[7] [8]

[9]

[10]
Eq9

where nj = number of components i; Ni,j = number of cycles of components i at load level/condition j; Ni,j(x%) = fatigue life of solder attachment of components i at load level/ condition j to cumulative failure probability x%; bi = Weibull slope of solder attachment of components i. The result of Equation 9 indicates whether the allowable system failure probability goal for the solder attachments has been met. This methodology has been found to be useful for lead-free solders as well13-15. In next months column, these concepts will be illustrated using a numerical example. References: [1] Engelmaier, W., Achieving Solder Joint Reliability Lead-Free World, Part 1, Global SMT & Packaging, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2007, pp. 40-42. [2] Engelmaier, W., Achieving Solder Joint Reliability Lead-Free World, Part 2, Global SMT & Packaging, Vol. 7, No. 8, July 2007, pp. 44-46. [3] IPC-SM-785, Guidelines for Accelerated Reliability Testing of Surface Mount Solder Attachments. IPC - Association 64

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

Global SMT & Packaging - September 2007

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