Effects of combined thermal and vibration loadings on the wire bond integrity

The sustainable development of the UK electronics industry requires the establishment of a robust supply chain that uniquely complements the UK´s expertise and record of technological innovation. Rather than competing with low labor cost economies, a major role for UK electronics manufacturing is to support and innovate in areas such as aerospace, defence, healthcare, energy and niche high value production, where the UK retains a technological lead. For several decades, the knowledge and infrastructure has been developed for conventional consumer products, which usually represent the high volume rather than high value electronics market. Therefore, an obvious knowledge gap and lack of supporting hardware and software in testing and qualification of electronics under non-consumer oriented harsh conditions are identified. Unfortunately, the fundamentals of device/components failure mechanisms under combined complex harsh conditions do not exist, which will ultimately underpin the advancement in design and optimization of existing or new products. The goal of this work is on improving the understating of the electronic components´ behavior in extreme environments. Particularly, it focuses on the identification of the failure modes for wires and wire bonds, as one of the interconnect methods, in combined conditions, such as, thermal and mechanical loadings. Particularly, the work presents a series of tests that have been performed to study the reliability of the electronic packages under the combined conditions of thermal and vibration loadings.