Determination of Mechanical Properties of Electronic Materials as Gold, Nickel and Tin using Nanoindentation

The pad metallization of multilayers is often built up by layers of Cu/Sn or Cu/Ni/Au which will be wetted during the reflow process by the solder material. Normally the Au layer protects the Ni against oxidation and the nickel layer suppresses the diffusion of Cu into the Sn and vice versa to produce intermetallic components (IMCs). In this way a solder joint is built up by the metallization layers of the multilayer and the electronic components and in between the solder with IMCs. The total system determines the reliability and the stresses of a solder joint and it is necessary to determine the mechanical behaviour of all layers as parameters for numerical simulations. The mechanical parameter hardness, Young´s Modulus and Yield strength will be measured by nanoindentation of szlig-tin crystals, ni and gold layers. It could be shown that a good agreement with the literature data was found, but also a big influence of the crystal orientation determined by EBSD measurement.