Effect of rare earth Ce on the fatigue life of SnAgCu solder joints in WLCSP device using FEM and experiments

With the addition of 0.03wt% rare earth Ce, in our previous works, the properties of SnAgCu solder were enhanced obviously. Based on the Garofalo–Arrhenius creep constitutive model, finite element method was used to simulate the stress–strain response during thermal cycle loading, and combined with the fatigue life prediction models, the fatigue life of SnAgCu/SnAgCuCe solder joints was calculated respectively, which can demonstrate the effect of the rare earth Ce on the fatigue life of SnAgCu solder joints. The results indicated that the maximum stress–strain can be found on the top surface of the corner solder joint, and the warpage of the PCB substrate occurred during thermal cycle loading. The trends obtained from modeling results have a good agreement with the experimental data reported in the literature for WLCSP devices. In addition, the stress–strain of SnAgCuCe solder joints is lower than that of SnAgCu solder joints. The thermal fatigue lives of solder joints calculated based on the creep model and creep strain energy density model show that the fatigue life of SnAgCuCe solder joints is higher than the SnAgCu solder joints. The fatigue life of SnAgCuCe solder joints can be enhanced significantly with the addition of Ce, is 30.2% higher than that of SnAgCu solder joints, which can be attributed to the CeSn3 particles formed resisting the motion of dislocation; moreover, the refinement of microstructure and the IMC sizes also contribute to the enhancement of fatigue life, which elucidates that SnAgCuCe solder can be utilized in electronic industry with high reliability replacing the SnAgCu solder.