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Thermal Fatigue in Solder Joints

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Abstract

Thermal fatigue in shear is an important cause of failure in electronic devices. Microstructures of solder joints with 5Sn-95Pb and 60Sn-40Pb solder contacts on copper have been studied and their performance in both isothermal and thermal fatigue investigated. In 5Sn-95Pb joints the shear fatigue failure is always through the solder rather than the solder-copper interface and occurs in an intergranular fashion. In 60Sn-40Pb joints, the shear fatigue failure occurs along bands of concentrated shear, but the shear induces a rapid coarsening of the eutectic microstructure which helps to concentrate the deformation.

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D.R. Frear received his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1987. He is currently a member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque. Dr. Frear is also a member of TMS.

Dennis Grivas received his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1978. He is currently a research engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Grivas is also a member of TMS.

J.W. Morris, Jr., received his Sc.D. in materials science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969. He is currently professor of metallurgy at the University of California, Berkeley, and is principal investigator at the Center for Advanced Materials at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. Dr. Morris is also a member of TMS.

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Frear, D.R., Grivas, D. & Morris, J.W. Thermal Fatigue in Solder Joints. JOM 40, 18–22 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03258168

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