Effect of microwave preheating on the bonding performance of flip chip on flex joint

A microwave (MW) preheating mechanism of anisotropic conductive adhesive film (ACF) has been introduced in order to reduce the bonding temperature for flip chip technology. Thermal curing of epoxy shows a very sluggish and non-uniform curing kinetics at the beginning of the curing reaction, but the rate increases with time and hence requires higher temperature. On the other hand MW radiation has the advantage of uniform heating rate during the cycle. In view of this, MW preheating (for 2/3 s) of ACF prior to final bonding has been applied to examine the electrical and mechanical performance of the bond. Low MW power has been used (80 and 240 W) to study the effect of the MW preheating. It has been found that 170 C can be used for flip chip bonding instead of 180 C (standard temperature for flip chip bonding) for MW preheating time and power used in this study. The contact resistance (0.015–0.025 X) is low in these samples where the standard resistance is 0.017 X (bonded at 180 C without prior MW preheating). The shear forces at breakage were satisfactory (152–176 N) for the samples bonded at 170 C with MW preheating, which is very close and even higher than the standard sample (173.3 N). For MW preheating time of 2 s, final bonding at 160 C can also be used because of its low contact resistance (0.022–0.032 X), but the bond strength (137.3–145 N) is somewhat inferior to the standard one. 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.