Crack propagation experiments on flip chip solder joints

The paper presents crack propagation experiments on real flip chip specimens applied to reversible shear loading. Two specially designed micro testers will be introduced. The first tester provides very precise measurements of the force displacement hysteresis. The achieved resolutions have been 1 mN for force and 20 nm for displacement. The second micro tester works similar to the first one, but is designed for in-situ experiments inside the SEM. Since it needs to be very small in size it reaches only resolutions of 10 mN and 100nm, which is sufficient to achieve equivalence to the first tester. A cyclic triangular strain wave is used as load profile for the crack propagation experiment. The experiment was done with both machines applying equivalent specimens and load. The force displacement curve was recorded using the first micro mechanical tester. From those hysteresis, the force amplitude has been determined for every cycle. All force amplitudes are plotted versus the number of cycles in order to quantify the crack length. With the second tester, images were taken at every 10th... 100th cycle in order to locate the crack propagation. Finally both results have been linked together for a combined quatitive and spatial description of the crack propagation in flip chip solder joints.