Failure mechanisms of the bonded interface between mold epoxy and metal substrate exposed to high temperature

The fast development of electric vehicles promoted the development of next-generation power modules. Along with this trend, the encapsulation techniques are also transforming from previous gel encapsulation to epoxy encapsulation because epoxy encapsulation reduces the module size significantly. However, the dissimilar bonding between the epoxy and the metal substrate is a weak part of the entire module. Unlike previous studies, which focused on epoxy properties and thermal stress, we investigated the failure mechanisms between the encapsulation epoxy and the copper substrate under high temperatures by considering the interfacial interaction. A high-temperature storage test (HST) was performed at 200 °C until 1000 h for encapsulated packages. We then measured the bonding strength and identified the fracture path at the nanoscale by SEM, XPS, and ToF-SIMS depth profiling. In addition, the changes in the epoxy were characterized by ATR-FTIR, nanoindentation, and XPS depth profiling. The bonding interface was analyzed with AFM-IR, SEM, EDS, and STEM. We found that the fracture happened inside the epoxy rather than the copper/epoxy interface. More importantly, we found that copper atoms diffused into the epoxy reaching approximately 100 nm. The diffused copper atoms and the long-time high-temperature heating promoted the epoxy pyrolysis, forming a 100 nm thick weak layer at the epoxy side, which is the key reason for the high-temperature failure. Our study provided a fresh understanding of the failure mechanisms of the bonding between encapsulation epoxy and the copper substrate under HST, which will contribute significantly to future power module design and material development. •The failure of the epoxy encapsulation under the condition required by next-generation power modules was investigated.•Failure mechanisms of the interface between epoxy and metal substrate exposed to high temperature were revealed.•The copper diffused into epoxy under high-temperature aging, reaching approximately 100 nm on the epoxy side.•Under a long-time high-temperature condition, the diffused copper promoted the pyrolysis of the epoxy.•The weak layer caused by pyrolysis is the key reason for the failure of the epoxy encapsulation under high temperature.