Investigations on High-Power LEDs and Solder Interconnects in Automotive Application: Part I—Initial Characterization

Thermo-mechanical reliability is one major issue in solid-state lighting. Mismatches in the coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) between high-power LED packages and substrates paired with temperature changes induce mechanical stress. This leads to a thermal degradation of LED modules by crack formation in the solder interconnect and/or delamination in the substrate, which in turn increases junction temperature and thus decreases light output and reduces lifetime. To investigate degradation and understand influence of LED package design and solder material, a reliability study with a total of 1800 samples − segmented in nine LED types and five solder pastes − is performed. First of all, in this paper a state-of-the-art review of high-power LED packages is performed by analyzing and categorizing the packaging technologies. Second, the quality inspection after assembly is realized by transient thermal analysis (TTA), scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM) and X-ray. For TTA, a new method is introduced to separate the thermal resistance of the LED package from solder interconnect and substrate by applying the transient dual interface method (TDI) on samples with different solder interconnect void ratios. Further measurement effort is not required. The datasheet values for thermal resistance are verified and the different LED package types are benchmarked. The void ratio of the solder interconnects is determined by X-ray inspection combined with an algorithm to suppress disruptive internal LED package structures. TTA and TDI revealed that initial thermal performance is independent of solder paste type and that voiding is more critical to smaller LED packages. In addition, lower silver proportion in the paste is found to increase voiding. SAM is less sensitive for initial void detection than X-ray, but it’s applied to monitor crack propagation while aging in combination with TTA. The results of the reliability study, i.e., the crack growth under temperature shock test for the different SAC solders, will be presented in a second independent paper.