Enhancing drop test efficacy for product quality improvement through interconnection shear tests

Comparison of data from high speed shear and drop test of four different tin based BGAs, DIP 34, DIP 33, DIP 18C and DIP 18B show that there is a good correlation between these two tests. The test performance ranking of the alloys from the drop test is DIP 33 > DIP 18C > DIP 18B > DIP 34 and that from the shear test is DIP 33 ~ DIP 18C > DIP 18B > DIP 34. There was a good matching of the failure mechanisms observed during these two tests. In addition, this article shows that by increasing the shear test speed, a better correlation with the drop test can be achieved. For the shear tests, there was a clear difference in the failure modes between samples having the lowest and highest shear strength values. In all the sample sets, the weakest link appears to be the component side IMC layer. This article shows that the shear test can be used as a proxy to the drop test to evaluate quality of components that are assembled in a mobile electronic product