Thermal cycling reliability of lead free solders for automotive applications

The solder joint reliability of ceramic chip resistors assembled to laminate substrates has been a long time concern for systems exposed to harsh environments such as those found in automotive and aerospace applications. This is due to a combination of the extreme temperature excursions experienced by the assemblies along with the large coefficient of thermal expansion mismatches between the alumina bodies of the chip resistors and the glass-epoxy composites of the printed circuit boards (PCBs). These reliability challenges are exacerbated for components with larger physical size (distance to neutral point) such as the 2512 resistors used in situations where higher voltages and/or currents lead to power dissipations up to 1 Watt. In this work, the thermal cycling reliability of several 2512 chip resistor lead free solder joint configurations has been investigated. In an initial study, a comparison has been made between the solder joint reliabilities obtained with components fabricated with both tin-lead and pure tin solder terminations. In the main portion of the reliability testing, two temperature ranges (-40 to 125°C and -40 to 150°C) and five different solder alloys have been examined. The investigated solders include the normal eutectic SnAgCu (SAC) alloy recommended by earlier studies (95.5Sn-3.8Ag-0.7Cu), and three variations of the lead free ternary SAC alloy that include small quaternary additions of bismuth and indium to enhance fatigue resistance. For each configuration, thermal cycling failure data has been gathered and analysed using two-parameter Weibull models to rank the relative material performances. The obtained lead free results have been compared to data for standard 63Sn-37Pb joints. In addition, a second set of thermally cycled samples was used for microscopy studies to examine crack propagation, changes in the microstructure of the solders, and intermetallic growth at the solder to PCB pad interfaces.