Effects of Tooling Tip Wear and Fixture Rigidity on Solder Ball Shear and Ball Pull Tests

The present study is aimed at evaluating the effect of ball shear tool wear and fixture rigidity on ball shear and ball pull tests respectively. In particular, the emphasis is placed on understanding the progressive failure mechanism during the ball shear test. The location of crack initiating is investigated on two kinds of shear tool with different wear features. In this paper, the experimental investigation is presented. Specimens with PBGA solder balls are fabricated and a series of ball shear and pull tests are conducted. In the shear test, the shear tool is stopped at a certain stage during test, and then the specimens are inspected by SEM. The failure modes and location of cracks are characterized. From the ball attachment strength and crack location of the ball shear test, no significant difference is found between the shear tools with different wear features. For investigating the effect of fixture rigidity on the ball pull test, two kinds of PBGA package with different sizes was fixed on the fixtures with and without gluing on a rigid plate. The failure modes and ball pull strength with different fixture rigidity were compared. The test results indicate that more brittle failures are found on the specimens without gluing on the rigid plate during the ball pull test, both on two kinds of package with different sizes. In addition, the data scattering of ball pull strength is large on the case without gluing on rigid plate.