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The purpose of this paper is to study the rheological behaviours of lead‐free solder pastes used for flip‐chip assembly applications and to correlate rheological behaviours with the printing performance.

A range of rheological characterization techniques including viscosity, yield stress, oscillatory and creep‐recovery tests were carried out to investigate the rheological properties and behaviours of four different solder paste formulations based on no‐clean flux composition, with different alloy composition, metal content and particle size. A series of printing tests were also conducted to correlate printing performance.

The results show that in the viscosity test, all solder pastes exhibited a shear thinning behaviour in nature with different highest maximum viscosity. The yield stress test has been used to study the effect of temperature on the flow behaviour of solder pastes. A decrease in yield stress value with temperature was observed. The results from the oscillatory test were used to study the solid‐ and liquid‐like behaviours of solder pastes. Creep‐recovery testing showed that the solder paste with smaller particle size exhibited less recovery.

More extensive research is needed to simulate the paste‐roll, aperture‐filling and aperture‐emptying stages of the stencil printing process using rheological test methods.

Implementation of these rheological characterization procedures in product development, process optimization and quality control can contribute significantly to reducing defects in the assembly of flip‐chip devices and subsequently increasing the production yield.

The paper shows how the viscosity, yield stress, oscillatory and creep‐recovery test methods can be successfully used to characterize the flow behaviour of solder pastes and also to predict their performance during the stencil printing process.

Non‐planarity of assemblies and co‐planarity variation effects on anisotropic conductive adhesive (ACA) assemblies have been a concern for ACA users since the materials are first devised. The primary objective of this paper is to introduce a new experimental method for studying co‐planarity variation effects on ACA assemblies.

The approach simulates non‐planarity through deliberate chip rotation during the ACA bonding process, thereby locking different levels of co‐planarity variation into ACA test assemblies. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis and electrical joint resistance measurement using the four wire resistance (FWR) method are used to mechanically and electrically examine the connection quality of the ACA assemblies bonded with non‐planar joints, for which the chip and substrate patterns are specially designed to allow joint resistance measurement using the FWR method.

Typical experiments and their results are presented and analysed. The bond thickness differences between the SEM measurements and calculations indicate that the real rotations are smaller than those predicted by the calculations. The typical experimental results show that the joint resistance reduces as the deformation increases until reaching a relatively stable value after a certain deformation degree.

The average joint resistances in the rotated samples are all bigger than those measured in the un‐rotated samples. This raises the question as to whether the joint resistances of ACA assemblies are more significantly affected by other affects of non‐planarity than just by its effect on bond thickness. However, before this can be confirmed, more research must be done to check if this behaviour happens for different bonding forces.

This paper reports a novel and simple experiment that can be used to examine the effects of co‐planarity variation on the electrical performance of ACA assemblies, by creating different bond thicknesses that are normally difficult to achieve by changing the bonding pressure, since ACA bond thicknesses are not linearly related to the bonding force. The merit of the technique is that there is no need to manufacture chip bumps and substrate pads with different geometries, or to control the bond pressure, to achieve bond thickness variation in ACA assemblies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of composite coating structure on the reliability of adhesive flip chip joints. The need for conformal coating is considered, especially for medical applications, and medical sterilization is also considered.

Two test lots were assembled and one of them was sterilized using gamma sterilization. Both test lots were coated first with epoxy and then with Parylene C, resulting in a composite coating structure. The reliability was studied using a constant humidity test and the failure analysis was performed with cross‐sections and scanning electron microscopy analysis. These results were compared to earlier research results on conformal coatings.

The reliability of both test lots proved to be good. The composite coating structure shields the joints from humidity and improves the reliability compared to non‐coated test samples. When the conformal coating was compared to the pure Parylene C coated test lot, the reliability was almost the same. This leads to the conclusion that the epoxy layer in the composite coating structure has no value when long‐term reliability is considered. Gamma sterilization does not greatly affect reliability. The epoxy coating under the Parylene C layer cracked during reliability testing.

The paper shows the influence of composite coating structure on the reliability of adhesive flip chip joints, particularly important in medical applications.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of conformal coating on the thermal cycling reliability of anisotropically conductive adhesive film (ACF) joined flip chip components on FR‐4 and polyimide (PI) substrates.

Test chips were joined using flip chip technology and an anisotropically conductive adhesive. The conformal coating used was parylene C and it was applied using the vapour deposition polymerisation method. The reliability of ACF joined flip chip components on FR‐4 and PI substrates was evaluated using −40/+85°C thermal cycling testing. Test lots with and without parylene C coating were studied. Additionally, one test lot with initial moisture inside the coating layer and a PI substrate was subjected to the test. The reliability results were analyzed using Weibull analysis and failure analysis was performed to study the failure mechanisms using cross sectioning and optical and scanning electron microscopy.

The results show a clear difference between the FR‐4 and PI substrate materials. PI substrate material proved to be reliable enough to withstand the thermal cycling testing. Two different occurrences of the first failures are seen and analyzed with FR‐4 substrates. The conformal coating layer did not seem to impair the reliability. Parylene C coating proved to be a reliable choice to protect, and even improve, the thermal cycling reliability of flip chip devices.

Usually, conformal coatings are studied in humidity tests. However, it is also vital to know whether the conformal coatings affect the reliability in thermal cycling and there is a lack of reliability studies in this area. This paper gives reliability data for conformal coating users about the influence of thermal cycling.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a cost effective ball grid array (BGA) workcell for solder ball attachment.

This paper presents the construction of a low‐cost high‐efficiency automatic ball attachment workcell. In fact, it is an economical means of simultaneous placement of all solder balls on BGA substrates containing multiple BGA units as well as singulated substrates. Common industry problems such as the effect of static charges, the solder ball oxidation, the missing ball, the extra ball, the ball alignment, the deformed ball and, etc. will be addressed and critical issues affecting yield will also be discussed in this paper.

BGA is a popular integrated circuit packaging that is often applied in laptop computers and other handheld electronic devices for the provision of a high‐connection count in a relatively small area. However, the cost of a market available BGA solder ball attachment workcell is very expensive and the flexibility in fitting various customized process is usually low.

The developed workcell cost is about half of the market available machines with similar specifications; the yield achieved is within three sigma confidence interval with competitive output rate. The maintenance and troubleshooting are easy since the machine was developed by the in‐house engineering team.

From the viewpoint of degree of cure, the purpose of this paper is to find how to improve the reliability of flip‐chip packaging modules based on an anisotropically conductive adhesive film (ACF) interconnection process.

The work begins by revealing the correlation of adhesive strength and contact resistance of flip‐chip joint interfaces with the degree of cure of the ACF. The effect of different degrees of curing on the electrical and mechanical properties of some typical ACF‐interconnected joints is studied, and the optimum degree of cure is suggested to achieve highly reliable ACF joints, where the performance variations of the adhesion strength and contact resistance are considered simultaneously. First, the degradation data of the contact resistance of some ACF assemblies, bonded with several degrees of cure, is collected during a standard high‐hydrothermal fatigue test. The resistance distribution is verified using a two‐parameter Weibull model and the distribution parameters are estimated, respectively. After that, a reliability analysis method based on the degradation data of contact resistance is achieved, instead of the traditional failure time analysis, and the reliability index, as well as the mean‐time‐to‐degradation of the ACF joints, as a function of the degree of cure, is deduced, through which the optimum degree of cure value and recommend range are suggested.

Numerical analysis and calculations are performed based on the experiments. Results show that the optimum degree of cure to achieve highly reliable joints is 83 per cent, and the recommend range is from 82 to 85 per cent for the ACF tested (considering a 95 per cent confidence interval).

The paper provides important support for optimizing the curing process for various ACF‐based packaging applications, such as chip‐on‐glass packaging of liquid crystal displays and flip‐chip bonding of radio frequency identification, etc.

The objective of this research is to address issues that relate to the assembly of Sn/Ag/Cu bumped flip chips.

Flip chips bumped with Sn/Ag/Cu bumps were assembled onto different lead‐free surface finishes at lead‐free soldering temperatures. Sensitivity to fluxes, reflow profiles, pad finishes and pad designs were all investigated and the potential consequences for assembly yields were calculated numerically.

Soldering defects, such as incomplete wetting and collapse and poor self‐centring were observed in the assemblies. Defect levels were sensitive to contact pad metallurgy and flux type, but not to flux level and reflow profile within the ranges considered. Owing to a particularly robust substrate‐pad design, defects observed in this work were limited to incomplete wetting and collapse, as well as poor self‐centering.

The scope of this work is limited to the lead‐free fluxes available at the time of research. A switch to lead‐free solder alloys in flip chip assemblies raises concerns with respect to the compatibilities of materials and the quality of soldering that is achievable. While this may be less of an issue in the case of larger area array components, such as ball grid arrays and chip scale packages, it is more of a concern for applications that use flip chips due to the smaller size of the solder spheres. Assembly yields tend to become more sensitive to the reduced collapse of the joints. More work is essential to investigate the potential benefits of more active lead‐free fluxes, both no‐clean tacky and liquid fluxes, in reducing or eliminating soldering defects.

The paper offers insights into assembly issues with Sn/Ag/Cu bumped flip chips.

The purpose of this paper is to accomplish the low cost mass‐production of flexible radio frequency identification (RFID) tag inlays.

An anisotropic conductive paste (ACP) is prepared by mixing uniform micro‐sized spherical conductive particles, latent curing agent and other additives into a thermoset epoxy resin. RFID tag inlays are assembled with the paste through flip‐chip technology. The microstructural analysis of bonded joints, bond strength testing, and high‐temperature and humidity aging testing are employed to evaluate the performance of the inlays.

It was found that the chips are hard assembled on the antennae by the ACP. Flexible RFID tag inlays assembled using the presented method have good reliability when working under high frequency (13.56 MHz) conditions.

The method presented is a promising new way for packaging flexible RFID tag inlays with ACP. Through the use of flip‐chip technology, large‐scale production is possible with low manufacturing costs.

The paper details a simple way to prepare an anisotropic conductive paste and to assemble flexible RFID tag inlays. The technique uses flip‐chip technology with the paste as the electrical and mechanical interconnection material. It presents a simple and fast method of assembly for flexible RFID tag inlays on a large‐scale with low cost.