BGA Reliability of Multilayer Ceramic Integrated Circuit (MCIC) Devices

Multilayer ceramic integrated circuit (MCIC) devices using low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) technology have advantages in the wireless applications attributed to the unique RF materials’ properties and ease of multilayering leading to high Q RF devices. In this paper, the reliability of MCIC-BGA was evaluated under thermal cycling and mechanical test conditions. Two commercial metal pastes were used for each prototype: pure silver and mixed silver/palladium. Accelerated thermal life tests and several mechanical tests were conducted for two prototypes of MCIC devices with three BGA configurations of each. Three-dimensional nonlinear Finite Element analyses were conducted to simulate the thermomechanical and purely mechanical responses under the test conditions. The test data and Finite Element results were correlated, and failure sites were examined. The study shows the reliability of MCIC with silver paste outperforms that of MCIC with mixed silver/palladium paste. Enough silver print and eutectic tin-silver solder are recommended in assembly line to maintain acceptable reliability.