Influence of Thermally Aged Underfill on Flip-Chip Packages

Underfill material plays a crucial role in flip-chip package reliability, thus it necessary to accurately understand the mechanical properties. The material itself is nonlinear and is dependent on degree of cure, temperature, strain rate and thermal aging, among others. In this work, two underfill materials were characterized for thermal expansion and viscoelastic properties over a wide temperature range. A second set of each material was thermally aged through flip-chip processing steps and 250 thermal cycles and then characterized. Temperature dependent thermal expansion and time-temperature dependent moduli curves were generated to represent each material type. These material models were then implemented into a nonlinear finite element model of a flip-chip package to evaluate package stress interaction through processing steps and thermal cycling. The influence that each underfill material had with and without thermal aging was analyzed with respect to typical package failure mechanisms.