Abstract
Antimony is attracting interest as an addition to Pb-free solders to improve thermal cycling performance in harsher conditions. Here, we investigate microstructure evolution and failure in harsh accelerated thermal cycling (ATC) of a Sn-3.8Ag-0.9Cu solder with 5.5 wt.% antimony as the major addition in two ball grid array (BGA) packages. SbSn particles are shown to precipitate on both Cu6Sn5 and as cuboids in β-Sn, with reproducible orientation relationships and a good lattice match. Similar to Sn-Ag-Cu solders, the microstructure and damage evolution were generally localised in the β-Sn near the component side where localised β-Sn misorientations and subgrains, accelerated SbSn and Ag3Sn particle coarsening, and β-Sn recrystallisation occurred. Cracks grew along the network of recrystallised grain boundaries to failure. The improved ATC performance is mostly attributed to SbSn solid-state precipitation within β-Sn dendrites, which supplements the Ag3Sn that formed in a eutectic reaction between β-Sn dendrites, providing populations of strengthening particles in both the dendritic and eutectic β-Sn.
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Acknowledgments
This work was partially funded by UK EPSRC Grant EP/R018863/1. The authors gratefully acknowledge the use of characterisation facilities within the Harvey Flower Electron Microscopy Suite, Department of Materials, Imperial College London.
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Belyakov, S.A., Coyle, R.J., Arfaei, B. et al. Microstructure and Damage Evolution During Thermal Cycling of Sn-Ag-Cu Solders Containing Antimony. J. Electron. Mater. 50, 825–841 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-020-08507-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-020-08507-x