In this paper the influence of the temperature cycle time history profile on the fatigue life of ball grid array (BGA) solder joints is studied. Temperature time history in a Pentium processor laptop computer was measured for a three-month period by means of thermocouples placed inside the computer. In addition, pentium BGA packages were subjected to industry standard temperature cycles and als...

Solder joint reliability of SMT components connected to printed circuit boards is well documented. However, much of the testing and data is related to high-strain energy thermal cycling experiments relevant to product qualification testing (i.e., -55C to 125C). Relatively little information is available on low-strain, high-cycle fatigue behavior of solder joints, even though this is increasingl...