See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324866326 Modelling the Inο¬uence of Coatings, Potting and Underο¬lls on ThermoMechanical Fatigue of Solder Interconnects in Electronic Packages Conference Paper · May 2018 CITATIONS READS 0 688 4 authors, including: Craig Hillman Maxim Serebreni DFR Solutions Northrop Grumman 90 PUBLICATIONS 725 CITATIONS 18 PUBLICATIONS 10 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE Nathan Blattau DFR Solutions 30 PUBLICATIONS 54 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Comparative Analysis of Board Type on Power Cycling Reliability of High-Power LEDs View project Reliability Physics Approach for High-Density Ball Grid Arrays in Autonomous Vehicle Applications View project All content following this page was uploaded by Maxim Serebreni on 07 June 2018. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Modelling the Influence of Conformal Coatings on Thermo-Mechanical Fatigue of Solder Interconnects in Electronic Packages 1,3 1 Maxim Serebreni, 2Ross Wilcoxon, 1F. Patrick McCluskey Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA 2 Rockwell Collins, Cedar Rapids, IA, USA 3 DfR Solutions, 9000 Virginia Manor Road, Suite 290, Beltsville, MD 20705, USA 301-474-0607, 866-247-9457 mserebreni@dfrsolutions.com Abstract Protecting electronic components at harsh environments and applications often requires the use of conformal coatings, underfills or potting compounds. The temperature dependent properties of these materials greatly depend on their chemical formulation. Conformal coatings used for electronic applications are available in a variety of materials ranging from silicones, acrylics, polyurethanes, paralyne and epoxies. The glass transition temperature (Tg) varies for each material and represents a phase change from a hard glassy one to a soft rubbery state. Temperature fluctuations experienced by electronics can span a wide range that can often include the Tg of the encapsulant. In this paper, thermal cycling simulations are performed on QFN and BGA components using different conformal coating materials. Material characterization is performed to determine the temperature dependent properties of several conformal coating materials. Results illustrate higher damage accumulation during ramp down and cold side of thermal cycles. Information obtained in this study is used to develop a mitigation strategy that enables selection of encapsulants without compromising desired system level encapsulation method to increase overall board level reliability. Key words Conformal coating, solder fatigue, BGA, QFN, Digital Image Correlation, Glass transition temperature joint and shift the characteristic reliability of components. Parylene C is a popular coating variant for high reliability aerospace applications [2]. Although parylene offers outstanding chemical resistance, dielectric characteristics and moisture protection it is cost prohibitive in consumer electronics and requires a specialized application method using vacuum deposition process. Compared to acrylic and urethane conformal coatings, parylene possesses lower CTE and higher melting temperature which provides protection at higher thermal excursions. Due to the popularity of parylene coatings in high reliability applications, more extensive research on thermal cycling reliability is available. Several investigations into the thermal cycle reliability of conformally coated components with paralyne C found no particular decrease in characteristic life of components except for a slight reduction in early failures for some components [3]. Investigation into the effect of parylene coating on thermal fatigue life of solder joints in ceramic BGA and leadless ceramic chip carriers found an increase in the thermal fatigue life by a factor of 2X [4]-[5]. The improvement in fatigue life in CBGA devices is a characteristic of both the paralyne deposition method and I. Introduction Conformal coatings are used in printed circuit board assemblies to provide protection against airborne contaminants, moisture and pollutants [1]. Conformal coatings are available in various chemical formulations ranging from epoxy, silicone, polyurethane, acrylic to parylenes. Coatings can be applied using variety of methods depending on manufacturing practices and protection requirements. Proper adhesion of the coating is necessary to properly insulate components from their respective environment. The interaction of conformal coating with components under extreme temperatures is often not evident and potential adverse effects have not been investigated due to the sheer number of configurations and environmental stresses that conformally coated electronics experience. Previous investigations into the effects of conformal coatings on the reliability of electronic components have illustrated the impact on solder joint fatigue during thermal cycling. Due to the large mismatch between the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of conformal coatings and electronic components, environmental stresses can develop in solder 1 temperature dependent properties that enable constraining the CTE mismatch between the CBGA and the PCB resulting in lower thermal strains and longer fatigue life. In this paper, the impact of several types of conformal coatings on QFN and BGA components is assessed using material characterization and thermal cycling simulations. Several configurations of conformal coating are simulated that correspond to spray, brush and dip coated applications. All thermal cycling simulations are performed for a thermal profile of -40ºC to 125ºC with 15-minute dwells and 10 ºC/minute ramp rate. Material characterization is performed to obtain the temperature dependent properties of the coatings from bulk samples. Thermal expansion of urethane coatings has been previously correlated as the cause of solder cracking due to significantly altering the solder stress environment [6]. The impact of improper conformal coating using acrylics, urethane, epoxy and silicone on SnPb BGA components have been previously investigated and found that heavy coating application can either decrease or increase thermal fatigue life of solder joints [7]. Silicone and acrylic conformal coating found to decrease characteristic life while urethane and epoxy found to slightly improve characteristic life; however, some first failures were found to initiate earlier in coated component compared to the non-coated components. Another study concluded that a polyurethane conformal coating thickness of even 10% of the lead thickness is sufficient to stress solder joints and accelerate fatigue failure of fine-pitch TSOP components and result in reduction of characteristic life by as much as 30% compared to a non-coated component [8]. II. Failure Modes of Encapsulated Components Failure modes of encapsulated electronics have manifested in the form of delamination or cracking of package internal interconnects (wire bonds, die etc.) and board level interconnection such as solder joints and leads. Solder fatigue is a prevalent failure mechanism that can occurs under vibrational and thermal loads. Underfills and staking materials are often used to mitigate the vibrational loads components experience. In some situation encapsulation of devices is done using potting or conformal coating to efficiently mitigate vibration loads. The addition of these conformal coating although improve vibrational fatigue can drastically reduce thermal fatigue life. Figure 2 shows a cross section along the diagonal of a 17mm BGA package after 620 thermal cycles of -55 ºC to 125ºC. Fatigue cracking is seen to propagate along the board side of the corner most solder joint. Minimal damage is seen at joints closer toward the package center. This indicates a classic distance to neutral effect. The addition of various conformal coating to electronic assemblies can largely alter the stress state in solder interconnects during changes in temperature as the high CTE and stiffness of the coating acting on components. This behavior is largely due to the combination of coating stiffness and coefficient of thermal expansion. Figure 1 summarizes the hardness of different potting compounds with operating temperatures [9]. Figure 1. Summary of hardness and maximum operating temperature of commercial potting compounds and glob tops [9]. Selecting the appropriate encapsulant to provide electrical insulation and environmental protection without inducing excessive mechanical stresses is not as simple as categorization the material based on hardness. Knowledge of the temperature dependent properties of the material, environmental/operating temperature range and application type are needed to be assessed. Figure 2. Cross section along the package diagonal after thermal cycling [10]. Figure 3 shows a cross-section and X-ray image of the same 17mm package after 620 thermal cycles that was coated with heavy application of Humiseal 1B31 conformal coating that fully underfilled the space between component and PCB. The difference between the two packages reveal that the solder joints along the perimeter of the package were more compressed. Components in Figure 3 exhibited lower 2 characteristic life than non-coated component in Figure 2. Compared to the control BGA component, the environmental stress solder joints experience with the acrylic coating has been significantly altered. The extruded shape of the solder joints indicates a compressive mean stress during thermal cycling that resulted in a compressive ratcheting effect. The stresses imposed on solder joints in electronic components are caused primarily by temperature cycling aggravated by differential expansion of entrapped conformal coating [11]. Figure 5 shows the CTE measurements with temperature for four conformal coating materials obtained from DIC. The large reduction in CTE measured for the Humiseal 1B31 is attributed to the reduction of modulus and increased adhesion of the material at high temperatures. This effect has been previously observed with TMA measurements as well for the same material as this material melts after 60ºC. Figure 5. CTE with temperature measured by DIC Figure 3. X-ray image and cross-sections along package diagonal with Humiseal 1B31 after thermal cycling [10]. Elastic modulus was obtained using TA Instruments RSA3 Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) system. Thin film specimens were prepared from bulk samples of cast conformal coatings. Pre-strain setting was adjusted for each material as to prevent overstraining the material during the large transition in temperatures. Most samples fractured past their measured Tg. Modulus values past this point were interpolated up to the maximum temperature used for simulation. All the conformal coating values exhibit an elastic modulus below 1 MPa past their respective T g. The elastic modulus can be calculated from the loss (πΈ ′′ ) and storage (πΈ ′ ) moduli using equation 1. III. Material Characterization Measurement of conformal coatings CTE was performed using commercial Digital Image Correlation (DIC) system by Correlated Solutions that was fitted with a thermal chamber shown in Figure 4. DIC offers direct measurement of surface strains and is especially suitable for non-contact full field measurements. 2 2 1 πΈ = (πΈ ′ + πΈ ′′ )2 Eq. 1 The storage modulus represents the elastic portion and is proportional to the stored energy and the loss modulus is proportional to the dissipated energy. Conathane CE1155 exhibits the longest transition region with highest T g out of the four-conformal coating. Conathane CE1155 exhibits three distinct regions where some glassy, rubbery and fluid regions are evident. The glass transition region is a kinetic process which depends on both the measurements method and data evaluation procedure [12]. This is evident in the difference between the data obtained through DIC and DMA listed in Table 1. Figure 4. DIC system with thermal chamber Values for the Tg obtained using DIC are found to be consistently lower than values obtained using DMA. Changes in the CTE in polymers tend to be driven by changes in the free volume while change in the modulus tend to be driven by increase in translational and rotational movement Thermal expansion measurements using DIC enable simultaneous testing of multiple materials reducing test time compared to Thermo-Mechanical Analysis (TMA) which is limited to measurements of individual material samples. 3 of the polymer chain. Change in CTE tends to initiate before a significant decrease in the modulus since lower levels of energy are required to increase the free volume compared to increase motion along polymer chain. made uneven to illustrate the unpredictable nature of conformal coating flow during heavy application. A 30 µm thick layer of solder with two elements through thickness was used for volume weighted average of creep strain energy density. Figure 6. Elastic modulus obtained using DMA. Table 1. Summary of CTE, modulus and Tg values for conformal coating. Figure 7. Cross-section view of QFN and BGA packages with three conformal coating configurations. Linear elastic material properties used in simulations of the QFN and BGA packages are shown in Table 2. Tabulated temperature dependent elastic properties of the conformal coating were taken from material characterization section. IV. Finite Element Analysis Quarter-symmetric models of a 6x6mm QFN package and a 17mm BGA component were modeled in Abaqus 6.14 as shown in Figure 7. Control conditions refers to component assembled to the board with no coating applied. CC1 refers to components with conformal coating applied to the package only. CC2 refers to condition in which some conformal coating has bridged between the package edge and the PCB. CC3 refers to condition in which the coating material fully encapsulates the component both above and below. Conformal coating thickness of 150 µm was chosen for both QFN and BGA packages. In CC2 coating configuration a 100 µm thick gap of the coating was modeled to bridge between the component and the board. A 62 µm solder joint height was chosen for the QFN package and a BGA ball height of 335 µm. Corner solder joint were meshed with 1703 elements in QFN package and 3148 in BGA package with hexahedral C3D8R element. In all simulations, the conformal coating was decoupled from the solder joints as tied contacts between dissimilar conditions with large CTE mismatch can cause stress singularities to concentrate at their interface [13]. The gaps between solder joints that the conformal coating bridges in the QFN components were Table 2. Linear elastic material properties for simulation Creep constitutive model used for SAC305 is shown in equation 2 with constants listed in Table 3. π»1 πΜππ = π΄1 (π ππβπΌπ)π exp (− ) Eq. 2 ππ Where equation πΜππ is the steady state creep strain rate, k is 4 Boltzmann’s constant, T is the absolute temperature and π is the applied stress. The constants π΄1 , πΌ, n and π»1 , which is the apparent activation energy. corner joints. The uneven bridging section of conformal coating are shown to cause addition bending and result in decrease of damage in one of the corner joints and increase damage in joints located along the package center. Table 3. Constants for equation 2 [14] The three configurations of conformal coatings in the QFN package are shown in Figure 8 with the component suppressed. Slots were made to accommodate solder joints as conformal coatings are applied post reflow. Figure 9. Accumulated creep strain energy density in QFN solder joints with Conathane CE1155 conformal coating. Figure 10 demonstrates the stress contours of the corner joint in QFN package with Conathane CE1155 CC3. The highest stresses are found to concentrate at the package side of the solder joint. Stress concentration along the joint toe initiates fatigue cracks that eventually propagate through the fillet resulting in an open circuit. To demonstrate the difference in stress states between a non-coated and coated QFN package the element indicated in Figure 10 is selected for analysis. Figure 8. QFN conformal coating configurations The size of the gap that is available for the conformal coating to flow underneath is significantly larger for BGA packages compared to QFN components due to the large thermal pad at the center of the component preventing complete underfilling. Therefore, it is expected that the influence of the same coating and application methods will result in different behavior between dissimilar package styles. Thermal cycling simulations illustrate the creep strain energy density for QFN device with Conathane CE1155 in Figure 9. Accumulated creep strain energy density is used as a damage indicator as creep deformation accounts for the dominant inelastic strain deformation. The results of the creep strain energy density contours in Figure 9 indicate that highest damage for CC2 configuration. A shift in distance to neutral effect with CC2 is also evident compared to CC1 and CC3 that indicate progressive increase of damage toward the Figure 10. Corner solder joint in QFN with Conathane CE1155. Axial stress and strain from the element centroid are plotted to generate a hysteresis loop during the first three thermal cycles as shown in Figure 11. The hysteresis loop indicated by the red lines for coated component is significantly larger in size compared to one in control package. This indicates that a significant portion of the increased strain energy 5 density is generated by the axial loading. It was found that the shear loading component in the QFN components was not changed with the addition of conformal coating. This observation deviates from previous simulation results that indicate having conformal coat flow underneath a QFN device significantly drops fatigue life by enhancing shear loads in solder joint with no particular mention to the modification of the axial loading components [15]. The influence of Acrylic and Paralyne conformal coating on BGA reliability during thermal cycling have found no significant change on characteristic life [16]. This is due to proper spray application that prevented bridging of the coating between components and boards. On the contrary, studies on the effect of heavy application of conformal coating on thermal fatigue of QFN component indicated that Polyurethane based conformal coating reduced fatigue life by a factor of 3X while Acrylic conformal coating had no significant influence [17]. The observed reduction in fatigue life is dependent on the amount of coating that ingresses underneath the component and the temperature dependent properties of the coating at a given thermal cycle. Figure 13 illustrates this effectively by comparing the accumulated strain energy density in BGA package with coatings. Figure 11. Stress-Strain hysteresis loop comparison between control and CC3 with Conathane CE1155. Figure 12 shows the volume weighted accumulated creep strain energy density for the simulated QFN package with different conformal coatings and configurations. CC1 conditions indicates similar values to the non-coated control configuration in grey column. CC2 indicates a 3.3X increase in strain energy density over control condition. Since a linear relationship between cycles to failure and strain energy density is assumed an equivalent reduction in fatigue life can be expected. CC3 condition for the Hysol PC12-007M and Humiseal 1B31 indicates lower damage compared to CC2 except for Conathane CE1155 that remains consistent with CC2 values. These findings demonstrate that the application method along with the conformal coating condition is responsible for fatigue life reduction. Figure 13. Accumulated creep strain energy density for BGA with three coating and application methods. It is evident that the influence of CC2 on BGA is not as significant as in the QFN component. Conathane CE1155 is shown to be most damaging similar to the QFN package with CC3 with the Humiseal 1B31 and Hysol coatings resulting in equivalent damage across configurations. A more progressive increase in strain energy occurs for the BGA package from CC1 through CC3 that is proportional to the leverage coating has between components and boards. V. Discussion of Results The hysteresis loops calculated for the corner joint in the BGA package are shown in Figure 14. Average of the stress and strain was taken for the same volume of solder used for volume weighted average of the creep strain energy density. The average stress values that generate the hysteresis loops for the BGA components with CC3 are used to qualitatively illustrate the change in stress state experienced by the solder with the different conformal coatings. The axial hysteresis response between the Humiseal and Hysol coatings is found to be almost identical. This observation correlates with the trend in accumulated creep strain energy density shown in Figure 13. A unique behavior in an increasing compressive mean stress in solder is found for all three coatings. The size of the hysteresis loop is driven by coating type based on Figure 12. Accumulated creep strain energy density for QFN with three coatings and applications. 6 highest temperature dependent modulus. Larger axial loads are transferred to solder joints with CC3 coatings that posses the larger elastic modulus for the longer duration of the thermal cycle. Below this region, high compressive loads occur and can potentially cause large plastic deformation in joints and result in accelerated failure. The worst possible environmental stresses occur for coated component when thermal cycle crosses the coatings T g as shown in this study. Therefore, components that are coated via heavy application of heavy conformal coating should utilize coating with Tg that is outside the expected operating temperature range. Addition alternative is to underfill components with a dedicated underfill materials that have low CTE and high stiffness to constrain thermal expansion and prevent flow of conformal coating underneath component. Figure 14. Average axial stress and strain for BGA corner joint with three conformal coatings with CC3 application. The increase in axial stress component can be associated with the Tg of the coating materials as shown in Figure 15. A peak in the tensile stress occurs as the coating expands across the Tg. The highest peak tensile stress is evident for the coating that maintains the highest elastic modulus for the longest temperature duration across the T g. Figure 16. Optimal low environmental stress operating temperature region with Conathane CE1155 coated components. III. Conclusion Based on simulation results and material characterization, the following conclusions can be made: 1. The addition of conformal coating that bridges the gap between component and PCB enhances the axial loads and not the shear loads introduced to solder joints as previously reported. 2. Urethane conformal coating is found to be most damaging compared to the Acrylic and Epoxy materials especially for QFN components when allowed to flow underneath the part. 3. The increase in damage with conformal coatings is attributed to the added tensile and compressive stresses due to coating expansion and contraction across the glass transition temperature. 4. Conathane CE1155 is found to be more damaging due to higher stiffness across longer temperature range compared to acrylic and epoxy. Figure 15. Average axial stress with time for BGA corner joint with three conformal coatings with CC3 application. Figure 16 illustrates the stresses and strains as function of temperature for conformally coated component with Conathane CE1155. The stress-strain relationship with temperature is nonlinear and highly depends on the material properties across the Tg. The lowest stress region identified for this configuration is shown by the bounding box for a narrow temperature range of 42 ºC to 85ºC. This region is above the Tg of the conformal coating where the material is soft enough to counteract the high CTE coating expansion. The bounding box indicates a region that would experience a similar stress state to that of a non-coated component. Acknowledgment The authors would like to thank Dr. Craig Hillman and Dr. Nathan Blattau for support of this research and Dave Hillman of Rockwell Collins for supplying materials for characterizations. 7 WEST, pp. 2202-2202. CAHNERS EXPOSITION GROUP, 1991. [12] Sadeghinia, M., Kaspar MB Jansen, and Leo J. Ernst. "Characterization of the viscoelastic properties of an epoxy molding compound during cure." Microelectronics Reliability52, no. 8 (2012): 1711-1718. 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