Effect of strain rate on mechanical behavior of Sn0.3Ag0.7Cu solder at macro- and micro-scales

Abstract

At present, there have been many researches on the effect of trace elements on the mechanical properties of Sn–Ag–Cu solder, and the methods used are mainly shear test or nanoindentation test. However, the size of structural solder joints in electronic packaging has reached the order of micrometers, and the mechanical behavior characteristics related to the strain rate of solder at the micro-scale are obviously more needed for the application of small-scale structural solder joints. For this reason, this paper selects Sn0.3Ag0.7Cu solder with superior comprehensive properties such as ductility and shear strength and low cost, and uses universal testing machine and Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar to perform quasi-static and dynamic compression tests on it. After fitting the Johnson–Cook constitutive model parameters of Sn0.3Ag0.7Cu, the dynamic indentation process at the micro-scale was simulated by ABAQUS, and the effect of strain rate on the mechanical behavior of the material at the macro-scale and micro-scale was analyzed, respectively. Our macro test results show that the yield strength of Sn0.3Ag0.7Cu solder is about 28.74 MPa. Under quasi-static load, the rate of increase of the stress value in the strain hardening stage will increase with the increase of the strain rate; while under dynamic load, the stress value corresponding to different strain rates does not increase significantly, and the main difference lies in the magnitude of plastic strain. In our numerical simulation of dynamic indentation, the result shows that when Sn0.3Ag0.7Cu solder is subjected to a high strain rate load at the micro-scale, a certain degree of hardening occurs in the middle and late stages of indentation propagation. At the same time, the calculated load–displacement curves indicate that the plastic flow ability of Sn0.3Ag0.7Cu solder in the micro-scale increases with the increase of the indentation expansion rate.