Thermal Assessment of Soldering MLCC Components

To improve the understanding of the thermal influence of soldering processes on electronic components, different multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) components were soldered on a self-designed printed circuit board (PCB) using a standard reflow process. Some of them underwent additional reflow cycles, while others were reworked by using a manual hot air rework station. After different numbers of cycles, the samples were embedded in epoxy and investigated by light microscopy. Additionally, a suitable computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation model was developed to be able to make thermomechanical assessments of this process. It consists of a PCB with copper pads, solder joints and an MLCC component with terminals on each side. A nozzle from which a high velocity jet at elevated temperature flows out is also included in this model. The simulations were carried out in a way where the hot air impinges to the MLCC with an offset to its center to provoke a temperature gradient within the MLCC.