Failure analysis of advanced packaging technologies using scanning acoustic microscopy

In recent years, scanning acoustic microscopy(SAM) has been found to be a very successful technique when used in the microelectronics industry to evaluate, from a reliability perspective, standard plastic packaging technologies such as PQFP's, PLCC's, DIP's and SOP's.[1,2] The recent explosion of advanced packaging techniques such as Chip-on-Board, Flip-chip and BGA and the proliferation of Microsystems has further widened the arena of what constitutes microelectronics. With such a wide breadth of devices from standard plastic packages to state-of-the-art microsystems, it is difficult to find a failure analysis technique which can cope competently with that scope. SAM is one such technique[3,4,5]. This paper will demonstrate the effectiveness of SAM at non-destructively analysing a range of advanced packaging technologies from integrated passives to flip-chip to microsystems.