Exposed pad packages were introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s because of their excellent thermal and electrical performance. Despite these advantages, the exposed pad packages experience a lot of thermo-hygro-mechanical related reliability problems during qualification and testing. Examples are dielift, which occurs predominantly after moisture sensitivity level conditions, and die-attach to leadframe delamination leading to downbond stitch breaks during temperature cycling. In this chapter, nonlinear finite element (FE) models using fracture mechanics based $J$-integral calculations are used to assess the reliability problems of the exposed pad package family. Using the parametric FE models any geometrical and material effects can be explored to their impact on the occurrence diepad delamination, and dielift. For instance the impact of diepad size is found to be of much less importance as the impact of die thickness is. Using the fracture mechanics approach, the starting location for the delamination from thermo-hygro-mechanical point of view is deducted. The results indicate that when diepad delamination is present, cracks are likely to grow beneath the die and dielift will occur. The interaction between dielift and other failure modes, such as lifted ball bonds, are not found to be very significant. The FE models are combined with simulation-based optimization methods to deduct design guidelines for optimal reliability of the exposed pad family.@en

This paper first examines the commonly-used thermal-moisture analogy approach in moisture diffusion analysis. We conclude that such an analogy using a normalized concentration approach does not exist in the case of soldering reflow, when the solubility of each diffusing material varies with temperature or the saturated moisture concentration is not a constant over an entire range of reflow temperatures. The whole field vapor pressure distribution of a flip chip BGA package at reflow is obtained based on a multiscale vapor pressure model. Results reveal that moisture diffusion and vapor pressure have different distributions and are not proportional. The vapor pressure in the package saturates much faster than the moisture diffusion during reflow. This implies that the vapor pressure reaches the saturated pressure level in an early stage of moisture absorption, even the package is far from moisture saturated. However, the interfacial adhesion degrades continuously with moisture absorption. Therefore, the package moisture sensitivity performance will largely reply on the adhesion strength at elevated temperature with moisture. A specially designed experiment with a selection of six different underfills for flip chip packages was conducted. Results confirm that there is no correlation between moisture absorption and the subsequent interface delamination at reflow. The adhesion at high temperature with moisture is the only key modulator that correlates well with test data. Such a parameter is a comprehensive indicator, which includes the effects of thermal mismatch, vapor pressure, temperature and moisture. In this paper, a micromechanics based mechanism analysis on interfacial delamination is also presented. With the implementation of interface properties into the model study, it shows that the critical stress, which results in the unstable void growth and delamination at interface, is significantly reduced when the effect of moisture on debonding is considered.@en