Opportunities and needs for interfacial fracture mechanics in microelectronic packaging industry

This paper will review the trends for semiconductors, the impact on electronic products, and the requirements on electronic packaging materials, design, reliability and manufacturing. There is an increasing realization that materials and mechanics principles can be utilized to great advantage in electronic packaging industry. New electronic packages such as ball grid array modules (BGA), chip scale packages (CSP), MicroVia substrates, and low temperature solder bump assemblies, present interesting opportunities for the utilization of fracture mechanics principles in the analysis and modeling of those packages. This paper will present, from a packaging engineer's perspective, the utilization of interfaial fracture mechanics in the packaging community. Particular emphasis will be on fracture mechanics applied to interfaces in an assembled packaging structure.