Improved predictions of lead free solder joint reliability that include aging effects

It has been demonstrated that isothermal aging leads to large reductions (up to 50%) in several key material properties for lead free solders including stiffness (modulus), yield stress, ultimate strength, and strain to failure. In addition, even more dramatic evolution has been observed in the creep response of aged solders, where up to 10,000X increases have been observed in the steady state (secondary) creep strain rate (creep compliance). Such degradations in the stiffness, strength, and creep compliance of the solder material are expected to be universally detrimental to reliability of solder joints in electronic assemblies. Traditional finite element based predictions for solder joint reliability during thermal cycling accelerated life testing are based on solder constitutive equations (e.g. Anand viscoplastic model) and failure models (e.g. energy dissipation per cycle models) that do not evolve with material aging. Thus, there will be significant errors in the calculations with lead free SAC alloys that illustrate dramatic aging phenomena. In our current research, we are developing new reliability prediction procedures that utilize constitutive relations and failure criteria that incorporate aging effects, and then validating the new approaches through correlation with thermal cycling accelerated life testing experimental data. In this paper, we report on the first step of that development, namely the establishment of a revised set of Anand viscoplastic stress-strain relations for solder that include material parameters that evolve with the thermal history of the solder material. The effects of aging on the nine Anand model parameters have been examined by performing stress strain tests on SAC305 samples that were aged for various durations (0-6 months) at a temperature of 100 C. For each aging time, stress-strain data were measured at three strain rates (0.001, 0.0001, and 0.00001 1/sec) and five temperatures (25, 50, 75, 100, and 125 C). Using the measured stress-strain data, the Anand model material parameters have been determined for various aging conditions. Mathematical expressions were then developed to model the evolution of the Anand model parameter with aging time. Our results show that 2 of the 9 constants remain essentially constant during aging, while the other 6 show large changes (30-70%) with up to 6 months of aging at 100 C. Preliminary finite element simulations have also shown that the use of the modified Anand model leads to a strong dependence of the calculated plastic work dissipated per cycle on the aging conditions prior to thermal cycling.