by Dr. Chingchen S. Chiu, Dr. Ning-Cheng Lee
The solder bumping process for BGA is investigated by using solder paste alone, solder spheres with solder paste, and solder spheres with fluxes. Also explored is the use of InTEGRATED® preforms together with either flux or solder paste. For bumping process involving Sn62 or Sn63 spheres, use of paste for sphere attachment produces excellent alignment results. In the case of using fluxes for Sn62 or Sn63 sphere attachment, the defect rate increases with decreasing flux viscosity, decreasing solvent volatility, decreasing pitch dimension, increasing flux deposition thickness, increasing flux activity, and increasing pad diameter. For overall better yield, a solder paste with long stencil life, good printability, and good solder ball performance should be the most promising eutectic sphere attachment material. For systems using pastes for Sn10 sphere attachment, no missing is observed, and the alignment improves with decreasing paste deposition thickness, decreasing solvent volatility, increasing sphere solderability, increasing flux activity, increasing pad dimension, increasing metal load, increasing pad solderability. Paste viscosity, pitch, and reflow profile has negligible effect on the Sn10 bumping yield using Sn63 solder paste. An easily releasable solder paste is crucial for area-array BGA if a regular print-release process is desired for bumping with solder paste alone. Bumping with InTEGRATED® preforms is promising. Reducing the thickness and width of the solder link is considered essential for improving the bumping success rate. Other potential bumping processes may include (1) dispense paste/reflow, (2) print paste/reflow/release, (3) apply solder mask/print paste/release /reflow/strip solder mask, (4) solder jet/reflow, and (5) sphere welding, and are briefly introduced and commented on.
lead-free, balling, bump, Bumping, BGA, solder sphere, solder paste, integrated preforms, flux, defect rate, pb-free, solder
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Posted on 1 Jan 2009
by Dr. Chingchen S. Chiu, Dr. Ning-Cheng Lee , Kimbela Randle, Christopher Parrish
Voiding in BGA at Sn63 solder bumping stage typically occurs at the interface of eutectic solder and the BGA pad, due to the tendency of forming minimal molten solder surface area at bubble surface . At low voiding level, Pb90 bump systems exhibit more voiding than eutectic Sn-Pb bump systems, primarily due to the sandwich effect which entraps fume bubbles for Pb90 systems. However, at high voiding level, Pb90 bump systems exhibits less voiding than eutectic Sn-Pb bump systems, due to the radius of curvature effect which compresses the bubble size of Pb90 bump systems. In general, the voiding in BGA at solder bumping stage increases with decreasing flux activity, decreasing flux or paste deposition thickness, increasing oxide level of spheres or pads, increasing pad dimension, increasing reflow profile length, and increasing metal content. The sphere oxide effect is more pronounced for Pb90 bump systems than for eutectic Sn-Pb bump systems, due to the immobilized oxide for the former systems as well as the sandwich effect . Voiding also increases with decreasing flux/paste viscosity, presumably due to a decrease in the flux capacity. No correlation can be identified between voiding and flux volatility. The mechanisms of voiding unveiled suggest that the preferential location of voids at interface is inevitable, and use of high melting point sphere for solder bumping helps confining the void size. Surface tension is the most crucial property dictating voiding. It influences the voiding phenomena via tendency of forming minimal liquid surface area at bubble surface and radius of curvature effect .
through-hole connectors, pb-free, lead-free
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Posted on 1 Jan 2009
