Methodology for correlation of porosity and mechanical properties of silver sintered joints in electronics

This paper presents a methodology to investigate and correlate the influence of porosity of silver sintered interconnects, e.g. used in power electronics, with their thermo-mechanical deformation behaviour. The proposed methodology includes the development of a shear specimen coming with a single cylindrical shaped silver-sintered joint enabling high resolution deformation measurements, strain rate controlled shear tests and according finite element analysis.The methodology also includes the development and optimization of a customized mechanical test system which is optimized for the measuring of deformations in the sub-micro meter range at high forces up to 500 N ([1], [2]). Furthermore, a multi-level image processing approach was developed to determine the porosity distribution of cross-section images of silver sintered joints.