Hermeticity of Electronic Packages

Table of Contents

Cover image

Front-matter

Copyright

Dedication

Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

About the Authors

Acknowledgments

1. Gas Kinetics

1.1. General Considerations

1.2. Mathematical Relationships

1.3. Problems and Their Solutions

2. Viscous and Molecular Conductance of Gases

2.1. Conduction of Gases

2.2. Viscous Conduction

2.3. Molecular Conduction

2.4. Conduction in the Transitional Range

2.5. Composite Conductance Equations

2.6. Smallest Theoretical Leak

2.7. Discussion

2.8. Problems and their Solutions

3. The Flow of Gases

3.1. General Flow Characteristics

3.2. Measured, Standard, and True Leak Rates

3.3. Leak Rates for Different Gases

3.4. Change of Partial Pressure With Time

3.5. Viscous Flow From Sealed Packages

3.6. Viscous Flow Rates of Different Gases

3.7. Problems and Their Solutions

4. The Flow of Gases into Sealed Packages

4.1. Molecular Flow

4.2. Oxygen Leaking Into Sealed Packages

4.3. Viscous Flow Into and Out of Sealed Packages

4.4. The Simultaneous Flow of Gases in Both Directions

4.5. Problems and their Solutions

5. Understanding Fine Leak Testing in Accordance with Method 1014, MIL-STD-883

5.1. Purpose of the Test

5.2. Basis of the Test

5.3. Fixed Method of Testing

5.4. Flexible Method of Testing

5.5. Comparison of the Fixed and Flexible Methods

5.6. The Effect of Viscous Flow

5.7. Leak Rate Limits are Too Lenient

5.8. Backfilling the Package with Helium

5.9. Bombing after Backfilling

5.10. Leak Rate Measurements Using Krypton-85 Tacer Gas

5.11. Problems and their Solutions

6. Fine Leak Measurements Using a Helium Leak Detector

6.1. Principle of Operation

6.2. Definitions

6.3. Calibration Using a Standard Leak

6.4. Measurement Errors, Not Including Background Errors

6.5. Background Errors

6.6. Errors Due to Helium on the External Surface of the Package

6.7. Minimum Detectable Leak (MDL)

6.8. Correlation of Standard Leaks

6.9. Cumulative Helium Leak Test (CHLT)

6.10. Locating Leaks in Packages

6.11. Problems and their Solutions

7. Gross Leaks

7.1. Introduction

7.2. Forcing a Liquid Into a Package

7.3. Fluorocarbon Vaporexiting a Package

7.4. The Bubble Test

7.5. The Vapor Detection Test

7.6. The Weight Gain Test

7.7. Optical Leak Test

7.8. Penetrant Dye Test

7.9. Fluorocarbons From a Residual Gas Analysis

7.10. Quantitative Comparison of Gross Leak Test Methods

7.11. Problems and their Solutions

8. The Permeation of Gases Through Solids

8.1. Description of the Permeation Process

8.2. Effect of Temperature on Permeation

8.3. Treating Permeation as a Leak Rate

8.4. Water Vapor Passing Through Plastics

8.5. Problems and their Solutions

9. Water in Sealed Packages

9.1. Water Related Corrosion and Circuit Failures

9.2. Water Leaking Into a Sealed Package From the Outside Environment

9.3. Water Outgassing Inside the Package

9.4. Water as a Result of a Chemical Reaction Within the Package

9.5. Problems and their Solutions

10. Residual Gas Analysis (RGA)

10.1. Description of the Test

10.2. What the Test Measures

10.3. Calculation of Leak Rates from RGA Data

10.4. Interpretation of RGA Data

10.5. The Qualification of Small Packages Using RGA

10.6. Problems and their Solutions

11. Residual Gas Analysis (RGA) and Failure Modes

11.1. History and Background – Moisture in Sealed Microelectronic Devices

11.2. Volatiles Other Than Moisture

11.3. Mass Spectrometry for Package Gas Analysis

11.4. Interpreting Gas Analysis Reports

11.5. Headspace Gas Compositions

11.6. Confusing Test Results

11.7. Moisture Compliance and Hermeticity

11.8. Conclusion

11.9. Problems and their Solutions

Appendix

Index

Front-matter

Hermeticity of Electronic Packages

Hermeticity of Electronic Packages

Second Edition

Hal Greenhouse

Robert Lowry

Bruce Romenesko

William Andrew is an imprint of Elsevier

Copyright

William Andrew is an imprint of Elsevier

The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, UK

225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451, USA

First edition 2000 published by Noyes Publications

Second edition 2012 published by Elsevier

Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

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Notices

No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. Because of rapid advances in the medical sciences, in particular, independent verification of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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11 12 13 14 15 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of Bill Vergara, a pioneer in the development of Hybrid Microcircuit Technology, and a friend and colleague for 22 years.

Preface to the First Edition

The technology of hermeticity addresses the transfer of fluids in and out of sealed enclosures. This technology is based on physics and chemistry, and (like many such technologies) is difficult to grasp when the exposure is brief or infrequent. One’s first exposure to this technology usually involves an application related problem. The understanding of, and particularly the solution to, the problem requires a considerable specific background. Not having such a background, the physical concept of the problem is just out of one’s grasp and its solution is nowhere in sight. Subsequent exposure to this technology only helps a little, as the background is still missing and the new application is often slightly different.

The purpose of this monograph is to provide the necessary background and problem solving examples, so that packaging engineers and other specialists can apply this knowledge to solving their problems. Ninety nine problems and their solutions are presented. These problems are representative of the type of problems occurring in industry. Many of the included problems are those that the author has experienced.

The technology of hermeticity is an offshoot from vacuum science.Vacuum science has a long history, going back to two Italians: Gasparo Berti in 1640, and Evangelista Torricelli in 1644. During the next three hundred and some years, scientists have tried to produce better and better vacuums. They realized that the degree of vacuum achieved, not only depends upon how much and how fast the gas can be removed from the vessel, but also upon the amount and rate of gas leaking into the vessel. This lack of a hermetic vessel eventually led to the technology of hermeticity.

Preface to the Second Edition

Hal Greenhouse

Baltimore, Maryland

It has been eleven years since the publication of the first edition. During those years, several improvements have been made in the measurement of leak rates.

One of these improvements is the technique of Cumulative Helium Leak Testing (CHLT). The pumping system for this type of test is cryogenic so that helium is not pumped out of the test chamber but is allowed to accumulate in the chamber. The increasing amount of helium over time results in the measurement of smaller leaks. This technology is included in Chapter 6.

A section ten has been added to Chapter 5. This section covers leak testing using the radioactive tracer method. The chapter includes all the aspects of this complex technology including the required equipment, calibration, types of errors, advantages and disadvantages.

Substantial improvement has been made in the field of Optical Leak Testing. Optical Leak Testing is the measurement of package lid deflection resulting from a difference in pressure between the inside and outside of the package. The deflection as a function of time is directly related to the leak rate of the package. The improvement in the test is due to holographic interferometry, a technique that measures the change in holograms as the lid changes deflection. Holographic Interferometry can measure changes one hundredth times smaller than a conventional laser interferometer. Optical Leak Testing, which has been primarily used for gross leak testing, has now been extended to fine leak ranges. The use of this extended Optical Leak Testing is discussed in Chapter 7.

An additional chapter has been added for the second edition. Chapter 11 is a second chapter on Residual Gas Analysis (RGA), but here the emphasis is on failure modes. The interpretation of RGA can help to determine the cause of failures. Chapter 5 in the first edition, Water Leaking into Sealed Packages, has been moved to Chapter 9 to be closer to RGA, a closely related subject.

About the Authors

Hal Greenhouse is a Material Scientist Emeritus at Honeywell AlliedSignal and has a master’s degree in physical chemistry. The first three years of his professional career were spent developing high temperature cermets for jet engines. His next six years were spent developing ferrite materials for the communication and computer industries. He was a pioneer in the development of hybrid microcircuit technology, starting in 1959 with research in the vacuum deposition of thin films substrates. In 1968, his activities migrated to the area of thick films, where he developed processes and requirements for military application. He was the lead professional in the design of several high reliability hybrids for a U.S. missile program, including the establishment of the processing requirements for these devices. He is the author of several patents and numerous publications. He has now retired and resides in Baltimore, Maryland.

Robert Lowry is an Electronic Materials Consultant. After obtaining BS/MS degrees in chemistry he worked for 32 years in semiconductor device manufacturing and assembly as a process engineer, materials scientist, and as Senior Scientist in charge of Analytical Service Laboratories. With regard to effects of moisture on electronic devices, he did failure analysis work on early moisture-related failures of NiCr and aluminum-metallized integrated circuits. He patented a surface conductivity dewpoint sensor and served on the Task Group that drafted the MIL-SPEC Test Method 1018 procedure for measuring moisture in hermetics. He established a government-suitable in-house mass spectrometer facility responsible for measuring moisture in hermetically sealed devices and for assuring delivery of hermetic products compliant to and statistically capable of the moisture limit. He conducted extensive split-lot studies correlating the performance of two different mass spectrometers, and helped to characterize a consensus standard circulatable single sample cylinder containing humidified air to improve moisture measurement correlation between laboratories. Since 2001 he has consulted for more than thirty microelectronic, medical device, and chemical manufacturing companies in hermetic package internal gas measurement and control, and in broader areas of applying advanced materials analysis techniques to enhance manufacturing yield, quality, and field service reliability of a wide variety of microelectronic products.

Bruce Romenesko is a Principal Staff Physicist in the Guidance, Navigation and Control Group of The Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory, where he is broadly responsible for materials and reliability issues in electronics used for missile and space applications. His primary responsibility is for materials, packaging and failure analysis in high reliability electronics, including hybrid microcircuits, surface mounted devices, and board level assemblies. His previous technical work has been within the areas of assembly, process development and substrate fabrication in both hybrid microcircuits and printed wiring board level microelectronics at JHU/APL. His packaging background also includes the role of principal packaging engineer for the signal processor box of the Topex spacecraft. He has recently been active in experimentation in microwave hybrid circuit reliability, radiation hardening of aerospace electronic systems, area array packaging technologies and in reliability testing methods.

He holds a B.S. degree in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. degree in Solid State Physics from the University of Maryland. He joined the JHU/APL Microelectronics Group in 1979 and has published over 50 papers on microelectronics and reliability. He is a member of IMAPS and IEEE, and served as the 2005 IMAPS President. He is a long-time member of the IMAPS National Technical Committee, has served as the Technical Chair for IMAPS 2001 National Symposium in Baltimore, and is currently both a member of the Publications Committee and Associate Editor of the International Journal of Microelectronics and Packaging. He was the 2007 recipient of IMAPS’ Daniel C. Hughes, Jr. Memorial Award.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my colleagues of the many years who have encouraged me to write this book, as there was no book addressing this specialized topic. I would like to thank the Communications Systems Division of the AlliedSignal Corporation for the use of the several hundred Residual Gas Analysis Reports. A special thanks to Danita Eichenlaub for her review of several chapters, for her technical discussions, and for her long-time encouragement. – HG

1. Gas Kinetics

Chapter Outline

1.1 General Considerations1

1.1.1 Boyle’s Law3

1.1.2 Charles’s Law (1787) or Gay-Lussac’s Law (1802)3

1.1.3 Dalton’s Law (1801)3

1.1.4 Avogadro’s Law (1811)3

1.1.5 Avogadro’s Number3

1.1.6 Loschmidt’s Number4

1.2 Mathematical Relationships4

1.3 Problems and Their Solutions7

1.1. General Considerations

This book is primarily about the movement of gases between a sealed package and its external environment. There are many properties of gases, which are dependent upon the gas pressure, the temperature, and the type of gas.

The father of the Kinetic Theory of Gases is usually considered to be Gassendi. [1] In 1658, he proposed that gases were composed of rigid atoms made from a similar substance, different in size and form. Gassendi was able to explain many physical phenomena based on these simple assumptions. In 1678, Hooke[2] took Gassendi’s theory and expanded it to explain the elasticity of a gas. The elasticity was said to be due to the impact of hard, independent particles on the material which surrounded it. The next advancement was made by Newton[3] in 1718. Newton proposed that the pressure of a gas was the result of the repulsive forces between molecules. This was later proven to be only a secondary effect. The first major improvement to the theory was made by Daniel Bernoulli[4] in 1738.

The Kinetic Theory of Gases was well established by the year 1870. It was based on classical physics such as Newtonian mechanics. Some of the proofs of the theory did not occur until the beginning of the twentieth century but they did not alter the classical theory. The classical theory accounts for the motion and energy of gases, and only has deviations when the pressure of the gas is greatly different from one atmospheric pressure.

Although the Kinetic Theory of Gases explained the gases macroscopically, the theory did not include their vibration, rotation, and the effect of these motions on translation. These later microscopic properties were explained by quantum and statistical mechanics. The classical theory suffices for the purpose of this book; the only exception is the topic of Residual Gas Analysis that is based on mass spectrometry. The flow of gases between a container and the container’s environment can be completely understood by the classical theory.

Molecules move very quickly, at a rate of about 500 meters per second. This rapid motion results in a very large radius of curvature so that the molecular motion can be considered to be in a straight line. The effect of gravity is negligible. The classical theory assumes perfect elasticity of a completely rigid molecule whose size is negligible.

Consider a gas in a sealed container. The fast moving molecules strike the walls of the container, as well as colliding with each other. The molecular collisions with the walls exert a pressure on the walls in proportion to the number of impacts. If we now decrease the size of the container by half, while keeping the number of molecules in the container the same, the density of the molecules will double. The number of molecules striking the walls in a given time has now doubled, so the pressure at the wall has also doubled.

The Mean Free Path (mfp) of a gas is the average distance a molecule travels before it collides with another molecule. The mfp is therefore inversely proportional to the density (or pressure) of the gas as well as the size of the molecule. If a gas is not confined, the mfp is proportional to the absolute temperature. The mfp of a mixture of gases considers the differences in diameters of each gas. The different diameters of the gases cause a greater variation from the mean than in the case where only one kind of gas is present.

The opportunity of gases to have different densities and different mfps gives rise to three different kinds of gas flow: viscous, molecular and transitional (diffusive).

The flow is viscous when the molecular collisions most often occur between the molecules, as opposed to collision of the molecules with the walls of the gas container, and there is a difference in the total pressure across the interface. Molecular flow takes place when the majority of the molecular collisions are with the walls of the container. The transitional flow is when both types of collisions are common and extend over two magnitudes of pressure. For example: viscous flow would be applicable at pressures greater than 10−3 atmospheres, molecular flow at pressures less than 10−5 atmospheres, and transitional flow between the pressures 10−3 and 10−5 atmospheres. The type of flow can be defined in terms of the mfp and the diameter of the channel.

• When the mfp/D is less than 0.01, the flow is viscous.

• When the mfp/D is greater than 1.0, the flow is molecular.

• When the mfp/D is between 0.01 and 1.0, the flow is transitional.

Another condition for defining molecular flow is the relationship between the smallest dimension of the leak channel and the average pressure.

• When DPave > 600μ-cm, the flow is viscous.

• When DPave < 10μ-cm, the flow is molecular.

• Where Pave is the average pressure in μ (microns of Hg).

• Where D is the diameter or smallest dimension of a channel or tube in cm.

It is seen from the latter condition that molecular flow is possible even at a pressure of one atmosphere, if the minimum leak dimension is small enough. This is the typical condition for fine leaks in packages where the collisions with the walls predominate.

The aforementioned is a general description of molecular motion. The specific laws by which the molecules behave are attributed to several scientists.

1.1.1. Boyle’s Law

Robert Boyle in 1662, and E. Mariotte in 1676, showed experimentally that at a constant temperature, the volume of a definite mass of gas is inversely proportional to its pressure. There is a deviation from this law at high pressures. The deviation is related to the temperature at which the gas can be liquefied. Boyle’s Law at 50atm has a 3.3% error for hydrogen, and an error of 26% for carbon dioxide. At 10atm, the error for carbon dioxide drops to less than 10% and hydrogen to less than 1%. The pressure under consideration in the study of hermeticity is seldom greater than 5atm, so that Boyle’s Law is adequate.

1.1.2. Charles’s Law (1787) or Gay-Lussac’s Law (1802)

The pressure of any gas in a fixed volume is directly proportional to the absolute temperature of the gas. This law implies that the cubical coefficient of expansion is the same for all gases. This is not true for high pressure (similar to the deviations to Boyle’s Law).

1.1.3. Dalton’s Law (1801)

The pressure exerted by a mixture of gases is the sum of the pressures exerted by the constituents (partial pressures) separately. Here again, we have deviations at high pressures that will be of no concern to the present topic.

1.1.4. Avogadro’s Law (1811)

The number of molecules in a gas of a specific volume, temperature, and pressure is the same for all gases, and is therefore independent of the nature of the gas.

1.1.5. Avogadro’s Number

The number of molecules in a gram molecular weight (the weight equal to the molecular weight, or one mole) for any substance is 6.023×10²³.

1.1.6. Loschmidt’s Number

The number of molecules per cubic centimeter needed to produce one atmosphere pressure at the standard temperature of 0°C is the same for all gases and equals 2.685×10¹⁹.

1.2. Mathematical Relationships

Boyle’s Law in mathematical terms is V ∝ 1/P or P ∝ 1/V. From the law of Charles and Gay-Lussac, P ∝ T. Combining these two equations, gives: P ∝ T/V or PV=constant×T.

Applying Avogadro’s law for one molecular weight (one mole), leads to the conclusion that the constant is independent of the type of gas. Designating this constant as R0, the equation is:

Eq. (1-1)

For n moles:

Eq. (1-2)

where:P=the pressure

V=the volume

R0=the gas constant

T=the absolute temperature in °K

R0=the gas constant for one mole and is standardized at one atmosphere and at 0°C (273.16°K).

One method of verifying Avogadro’s law was to measure the volume of different gases when they consisted of one mole at 0°C. This volume was determined to be 22.414 liters.

From Eq. (1-1):

and since 1atm=760torr,

R0 can also be evaluated in ergs, where 1erg is 1dynecm, and 1dyne is 1gramcmsec−2. Here the pressure is 76cm of mercury and the volume is in cubic centimeters.

Since 4.184×10⁷ergs=1 calorie:

The pressure of a homogeneous gas is:

Eq. (l-3)

where:vs²=the root mean square of the average velocity

ρ=the density of the gas.

The derivation of Eq. (1-3) is lengthy but can be found in Glasstone[5] and in Jeans. [6]

The density of a gas is:

Eq. (l-4)

where γ is the mass of the gas in volume V.

Combining Eq. (l-3) and Eq. (l-4):

Note that 3PV= vs²γ, and if we divide by 2:

Eq. (1-5)

The last term is the well-known equation for kinetic energy.

The velocity of a molecule is related to the Boltzmann constant.

Eq. (1-6)

where:vs²=the root mean square of the velocity

k=Boltzmann constant=1.38×10−16ergs deg−1, and is the gas constant for a single molecule

T=absolute temperature

m=the mass of one molecule

Putting Eq. (1-6) into Eq. (1-5),

Now γ/m=N, the number of molecules, so that:

Eq. (1-7)

If we consider only one mole, then N becomes NA, Avogadro’s number, and V is the volume for one