A multi-disciplinary study of vibration based reliability of lead-free electronic interconnects

Vibration loading can have a significant impact on the reliability of electronic components. Due to the cyclic strain and stress in the materials making up the component these can cause damage and hence wear out failures. The recent move from lead to lead-free soldering by the electronics industry has necessitated the generation of material properties data that will allow accurate prediction of the lead-free solder's performance under vibration conditions. To assess the reliability of lead-free solders under vibration loading, test equipment has been designed for small solder joints. Such test equipment must be able to extract solder mechanical properties and physics of failure fatigue lifetime parameters/models for numerical model and prediction of lifetime of real electronic components. This paper focuses on the design, analysis and development of this type of test facility. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.