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Effect of introducing high temperature gradients on IMC growth and shear properties in hourglass-shaped microbump joints during thermocompression bonding

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Abstract

Hourglass-shaped microbump joints are expected to be used in three-dimensional (3D) chip stacking interconnect technology due to their strong resistance to electromigration and great underfill compatibility. However, the development of hourglass-shaped joints was challenged by their mechanical strength concerns. In this study, hourglass-shaped microbump joints were formed by stretching the microbump joints during the thermocompression bonding (TCB) process. Meanwhile, a high temperature gradient was introduced into the microbump joints to enable rapid diffusion growth of intermetallic compound (IMC) in Sn-3.5Ag solder, which greatly improved the strength of the microbump joints. The full-IMC microbump joint (108.1 MPa) is twice as strong as the non-full-IMC microbump joint (54.6 MPa), and the 40-µm joints showed even higher strength than that of conventional non-full-IMC microbump joints of 100 μm. The shear test revealed that the hourglass-shaped microbump joint fracture location appeared at the waist rather than near the IMC layer. The fracture mode changed from mixed ductile-brittle fracture to brittle fracture after the transition to full-IMC microbump joints.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. U20A6004), Key Project of Science and Technology of Changsha (kq2102005), Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (Grant No. 2021JJ40734).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of High Performance Complex Manufacturing, College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China

    Chu Tang, Zhuo Chen & Wenhui Zhu

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  1. Chu Tang
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  2. Zhuo Chen
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Contributions

CT: data curation, writing - original draft. ZC: methodology, writing-review and editing, supervision. WZ: conceptualization, methodology.

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Correspondence to Zhuo Chen or Wenhui Zhu.

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Tang, C., Chen, Z. & Zhu, W. Effect of introducing high temperature gradients on IMC growth and shear properties in hourglass-shaped microbump joints during thermocompression bonding. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 34, 702 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-023-10124-3

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