Ag₃Sn Compounds Coarsening Behaviors in Micro-Joints

As solder joints are being scaled down, intermetallic compounds (IMCs) are playing an increasingly critical role in the reliability of solder joints, and thereby an in-depth understanding of IMCs microstructure evolutions in micro-joints is of great significance. This study focused on coarsening behaviors of Ag₃Sn compounds in Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu (SAC305) micro-joints of flip chip assemblies using thermal shock (TS) tests. The results showed that the Ag₃Sn compounds grew and rapidly coarsened into larger ones as TS cycles increased. Compared with such coarsening behaviors during thermal aging, TS exhibited a significantly accelerating influence. This predominant contribution is quantitatively determined to be induced by strain-enhanced aging. Moreover, based on observations for Ag₃Sn microstructure evolutions during TS cycling, one particular finding showed that there are two types of coarsening modes (i.e., Ostwald ripening and Necking coalescence) co-existing in the Ag₃Sn coarsening process. The corresponding evolutions mechanism was elucidated in a combination of simulative analysis and experimental validation. Furthermore, a kinetic model of the Ag₃Sn coarsening was established incorporating static aging and strain-enhanced aging constant, the growth exponent ( ) was calculated to be 1.70, and the predominant coarsening mode was confirmed to be the necking coalescence.