Harnessing heterogeneous nucleation to control tin orientations in electronic interconnections.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29203763.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-017-01727-6 and PMC identifier 5715011.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
While many aspects of electronics manufacturing are controlled with great precision, the nucleation of tin in solder joints is currently left to chance. This leads to a widely varying melt undercooling and different crystal orientations in each joint, which results in a different resistance to electromigration, thermomechanical fatigue, and other failure modes in each joint. Here we identify a family of nucleants for tin, prove their effectiveness using a novel droplet solidification technique, and demonstrate an approach to incorporate the nucleants into solder joints to control the orientation of the tin nucleation event. With this approach, it is possible to change tin nucleation from a stochastic to a deterministic process, and to generate single-crystal joints with their c-axis orientation tailored to best combat a selected failure mode.