Paving the way for the replacement of solder interconnections in power electronics by silver-sinter using pulsed infrared thermography

In this work we show the capabilities of non-destructive testing by pulsed infrared thermography (PIRT) on large-area silver-sinter layers. This method can achieve a similar reliability in detecting delamination as SAM and X-ray analysis. The great advantage of PIRT is its potential to become a tool for 100% in-line inspections in the production line of power modules, whereas SAM and X-ray are preferred as offline tools for reasons of costs, time or the need of a coupling medium. PIRT could help to replace vulnerable solder layers in power modules by much better performing silver-sinter layers to enhance the reliability of those modules. By PIRT analysis on sample series with varied sinter process parameters and different sinter pastes, which will be compared to conventional failure analysis such as SAM and x-ray, this work can show the quality of this method for the developing process of new sinter applications and for the following quality assessment in production lines.