Analysis of solder joint Edge Effect in Acoustic Micro Imaging of microelectronic packages: A preliminary study

A guaranteed occurrence when using Acoustic Micro Imaging, the phenomena called Edge Effect is not clearly understood. The widely accepted reliance on scatter theory to explain edge effect is challenged in this study. The edge effect of solder joints is investigated using finite element modeling. Simulation strategies for reducing computational load are proposed. A methodology to characterize acoustic data for edge effect analysis is further developed. Results show that the relationship between scatter theory and edge effect is not straight forward.