| Underfill resins are used to reduce solder fatigue in flip-chip assemblies. Both underfilling and curing processes are critical to achieve reliable finished products. This study included two main themes; the development of processing diagrams for commercial underfill resins and the fundamental understanding of cure kinetics and evolution of cure stresses in model epoxies. A variety of techniques have been used to characterize the fundamental phenomena involved in the processing of underfill resins. The flow behavior, cure kinetics, cure stresses, outgassing phenomena and void formation of underfill resins were studied. Processing diagrams for underfill resins were developed by mapping fundamental phenomena involved to provide a guideline for underfilling and curing steps. With these processing diagrams one should be able to design his underfilling and curing process with scientific approach.; Two commercial underfill resins, which were evaluated as part of a SEMATECH program, where shown to possess significantly different processing characteristics. However, the appropriate explanation could not be made without knowing the proprietary chemistry of the systems. Therefore, model epoxies were formulated. Three different systems were investigated; amine, imidazole, and anhydride curing agent systems. With the known chemistry, the reaction kinetics and developed cure stress can be explained more clearly. Vitrification, which severely retards the rate of reaction, was found in amine (N-aminoethylpiperazine) and anhydride (Hexahydro-4-methylphthalic anhydride) cured systems when the cure temperatures were lower than the glass transition temperature (T g) of fully cured samples; however, imidazole(2-ethyl-4-methyl-imidazole) did not show vitrification when it was cured at 20 degrees below the T g of fully cured sample due to the large exotherms. Interestingly for imidazole system, the higher cure temperature exhibited a lower Tg. This could possibly be explained by the occurrence of etherification at high cure temperature.; Evolution of cure stress depends not only on the crosslink density (which impact the volume shrinkage) and modulus of resin, but the correlation between the time scales that display the heat of reaction and the gelation also affect the magnitude of cure stress. |
