Research on life evaluation method of solder joint based on eddy current pulse thermography

With the wide usage of electronic packaging technologies such as Ball Grid Array in electronic industry, it is necessary to maintain its quality in order to meet the demand of electronic products for function, integration, and size reduction. However, as the size of solder joints in such technology decreases, the solder joints are more and more prone to defects. To solve the life prediction problem of small-size packages having interconnections in the high-density chip, a method based on the eddy current pulsed thermography (ECPT) is put forward to study the remaining life prediction of solder joints. A 3D induction heating finite element model is established, by which the crack length of defect solder joints can be distinguished using temperature field. At the same time, the remaining life of defect solder joints can be characterized by the length of the crack. Furthermore, the experiments are carried out on solder joints whose diameter is 0.4 mm. Both simulation and experiment results verify that it is reliable and convenient to use 3D induction heating based temperature field from ECPT to evaluate the remaining life of cracks in solder joints.