Experimental Setup for the Determination of Mechanical Solder Materials Properties at Elevated Temperatures

Abstract

The fabrication of microelectronic and micromechanical devices leads to the use of only very small amounts of matter, which can behave quite differently than the corresponding bulk. Clearly, the materials will age and it is important to gather information on the (changing) material characteristics. In particular, Young’s modulus, yield stress, and hardness are of great interest. Moreover, a complete stress-strain curve is desirable for a detailed material characterization and simulation of a component, e.g., by Finite Elements (FE). However, since the amount of matter is so small and it is the intention to describe its behavior as realistic as possible, miniature tests are used for measuring the mechanical properties. In this paper two miniature tests are presented for this purpose, a mini-uniaxial-tension-test and a nanoindenter experiment. In the tensile test the axial load is prescribed and the corresponding extension of the specimen length is recorded, both of which determines the stress-strain- curve directly. The stress-strain curves are analyzed by assuming a non-linear relationship between stress and strain of the Ramberg-Osgood type and by fitting the corresponding parameters to the experimental data (obtained for various microelectronic solders) by means of a non-linear optimization routine. For a detailed analysis of very local mechanical properties nanoindentation is used, resulting primarily in load vs. indentation-depth data. According to the procedure of Oliver and Pharr this data can be used to obtain hardness and Young’s modulus but not a complete stress-strain curve, at least not directly. In order to obtain such a stress-strain-curve, the nanoindentation experiment is combined with FE and the coefficients involved in the corresponding constitutive equations for stress and strain are obtained by means of the inverse method. The stress-strain curves from nanoindentation and tensile tests are compared for two mate-rials (aluminum and steel). Differences are explained in terms of the locality of the measurement. Finally, material properties at elevated temperature are of particular interest in order to characterize the materials even more completely. We describe the setup for hot stage nanoindentation tests in context with first results for selected materials.