The reactive ion etcher as a physical and failure analysis tool for FC-PGA packages

Failure analysis of integrated circuit packages often requires the selective removal of material such as solder resists, ink swap and more importantly package substrate material. Although mechanical sample preparation has been useful in some cases, it lacks the selectivity needed to precisely control the degree of removal. Reactive ion etching (RIE) has been used during the organic land grid array (OLGA) FA activities for removing package substrate. However, during the development stage of flip chip pin grid array (FCPGA) packaging, the use of RIE faced some difficulty. Further development reveals that package differences such as the addition of pins and larger form factor has caused the proliferation of the usage of RIE from OLGA to FCPGA to be slightly complicated.