Formation and Evolution of Intermetallic Compounds in Solder Joint for Electronic Interconnect

Abstract

As solder joints become increasingly miniaturized to meet the severe demands of future electronic packaging, the thickness of intermetallic compounds (IMC) in solder joint continuously decreases, while, the IMC proportion to the whole solder joint increases. So IMC plays a more and more important role in the reliability of microelectronic structure and microsystems. In this paper, the formation and growth behavior, along with the composition of IMC at the interface of Sn-based solders/Cu substrate in soldering were reviewed comprehensively. The effect of isothermal aging, thermal-shearing cycling and electromigration on the interfacial IMC growth and evolution were also presented. Furthermore, the formation mechanism of Kirkendall voids during thermal aging was introduced. In addition, the effect of the interfacial IMC on mechanical properties of solder joints was in-depth summarized. Adopting an appropriate flux to control the thickness of the IMC to improve the reliability of solder joints and electronic products was proposed in the end of this paper.