Fracture properties of Cu-EMC interfaces at harsh conditions

Interfacial delamination is known as one of the root causes of failure in microelectronic industry and therefore is getting more and more attention. In order to be able for judging the risk of interface fracture, the critical fracture properties of the interfaces should be available i.e. Interfacial toughness. Interfacial toughness is strongly dependent on the temperature, the moisture content of the materials involved and on the socalled mode mixity of the stress state near the crack tip. Dealing with the moisture effect the highest temperature had to be limited to 100°C. This limitation is quite restrictive for the application of the obtained critical fracture data for reliability studies of microelectronic packages. This is because of the fact that for pre-moisturized microelectronic packages the interface delamination failure often occurs above this temperature limit. Therefore the present study deals with the experimental and simulation procedures for establishing the interfacial fracture toughness of EMC-Copper leadframe interfaces at pressure cooker conditions, temperature larger than 100°C and 100% RH. For the first time, the critical interfacial toughness is produced for this harsh environment.