Investigations on the mechanical stability and integrity of chip components after picking and placing in the surface mount technology process chain

Standard surface mount technology (SMT) components based on ceramic bulk body's have been found to be damaged during the assembly process. Mechanical cracks within the components are one possible damage mode. This has been discussed in literature (see [1]). These cracks are a rising problem with smaller component sizes and increasing number of used parts per module. Problems become crucial when damaged components pass the normal electrical and optical inspection methods. The occurrence of this kind of non-detected failures is comparable rare. Therefore, a statistical approach is needed to find and assess the underlying effects. For this study we investigated SMD components of the size 0402. One challenge is the identification of the mechanical fault-prone components. Standard inspection methods do not safely identify these pre-damaged components. In order to differentiate pre-damaged components and faultless components the mechanical tensile strength of SMD components was used as an indicator. The study used different impact settings to find the critical energy to crack ceramic based components. It can be shown that the initial impact energy is the major variable for structural damages on ceramic based components. In the case of an increased energy absorption in the support the amount of damaged component increases. During the assembly process the pick and place parameters has been varied (placement force and energy absorption using the spring systems). Its influences on the resulting tensile strength of 0402 SMD components has been investigated. The main effect on that is the spring system on the pick and place equipment.