Machine learning framework for predicting

reliability of solder joints

Sung Yi
Mechanical and Materials Engineering Department, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA, and
Robert Jones
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA

Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to present a machine learning framework for using big data analytics to predict the reliability of solder joints. The
purpose of this study is to accurately predict the reliability of solder joints by using big data analytics.
Design/methodology/approach – A machine learning framework for using big data analytics is proposed to predict the reliability of solder joints
accurately.
Findings – A machine learning framework for predicting the life of solder joints accurately has been developed in this study. To validate its accuracy
and efficiency, it is applied to predict the long-term reliability of lead-free Sn96.5Ag3.0Cu0.5 (SAC305) for three commonly used surface finishes
such OSP, ENIG and IAg. The obtained results show that the predicted failure based on the machine learning method is much more accurate than
the Weibull method. In addition, solder ball/bump joint failure modes are identified based on various solder joint failures reported in the literature.
Originality/value – The ability to predict thermal fatigue life accurately is extremely valuable to the industry because it saves time and cost for
product development and optimization.
Keywords Thermal fatigue, Machine learning, Solder joints failure prediction, Thermal cycling, Cracks, Drop
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction pack, burn-in, etc. When the solder joint of an electronic

Solder joints have been used in the electronic industry as both
structural and electrical interconnections between electronic
devices and printed circuit boards (PCB) for many years. The
roles of solders are to make an electrical connection as well as to
protect solder joints from external mechanical shock or external
chemical environment. However, when solder joints are under
thermal cyclic loading, mismatch in the coefficient of thermal
expansions (CTE) between PCB and solder balls creates
thermal strains and stresses on the joints, which may finally
result in cracking (Zhong and Yi (1999), Zhong et al. (2000);
Zhong et al. (2002), Kim et al. (2009); Chu et al. (2014), Yao
et al. (2019)). Consequently, the mechanical interconnection is
lost, leading to electrical failures (such as hard/intermittent
open and parametric failure), which in turn causes malfunction
of the circuit or whole system. Such failure mechanism is called
thermal fatigue. Thermal fatigue is a major failure mechanism
of solder joints and plays an important role in determining the
reliability of electronic packages. Moreover, solder balls in ball
grid array (BGA) packages are subjected to external forces
during post surface mount technology processes such as socket
insertion, testing, shipment, etc. Poor mechanical properties of
solder balls often lead to missing balls during testing, mark and
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package fractures, eventually electrical operational failures
occur. Therefore, the mechanical property and strength of
solder joints become critical to the reliability of electronic
devices and systems.
Solder Joint Reliability (SJR) is the probability that solder
joints will provide proper electrical and mechanical connections
over a specific period of time (design life) under the design
operating conditions without failures. Solder joint reliability
can be classified as component-level solder joint reliability and
board-level solder joint reliability. Component-level solder
joint reliability addresses the reliability of solder joints within
the single package prior to board mounting, while board-level
solder joint reliability deals with the reliability of the solder
joints of an electronic package after it has been mounted on a
board or substrate, encompassing both the solder-to-package
and solder-to-board interfaces. Assurance of board-level solder
joint reliability of a package is essential for electronic systems.
Many previous works (Tapani Nurmi and Olavi Ristolainen
(2002), Syed (2004); Kang et al. (2004), Hegde et al. (2009);
Andersson et al. (2009), Collins et al. (2012); Liu et al. (2017),
Jiang et al. (2018)) have been carried out to understand the
reliability of solder joints. Various factors including thermal
deformation, fundamental mechanical properties such as
elastic modulus, yield strength, shear strength, fatigue, creep,
microstructure, intermatallic compound formation,
electromigration, void formation, and metallurgy and phase
transformation affect solder joint reliability. Failure of the

Soldering & Surface Mount Technology Received 2 April 2019

© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 0954-0911] Revised 28 May 2019
[DOI 10.1108/SSMT-04-2019-0013] Accepted 28 June 2019
 Machine learning framework Soldering & Surface Mount Technology
Sung Yi and Robert Jones

solder joint in electronic products can arise either when solder joint reliability by Weibull distributions can be found in
individual overstress events exceed the strength of the solder many previous works (Tapani Nurmi and Olavi Ristolainen
joint; or when the accumulation of damage due to cyclic (2002), Kang et al. (2004); Suhling et al. (2004), Arulvanan
loading exceeds its fatigue strength. Failure accelerators can et al. (2006); Yew et al. (2009), Herkommer et al. (2010);
include voids, solder mask defects, misalignment of the Collins et al. (2012), Arfaei et al. (2013); Libot et al. (2018)).
terminal, low terminal height, poor intermetallic formation, A typical example is shown in Figure 1. Collins et al. (2012)
and lack of wetting at the terminal and pad interfaces. studied the long-term reliability of 2512 ceramic chip resistors
Reliability and lifetime predictions of solder joints in with Sn96.5Ag3.0Cu0.5 (SAC305) solder joints under
electronic packages have been one of the most difficult accelerated temperature cycling (ATC) conditions. Three
problems in the electronics industry. Assurance of board-level different surface finishes such as organic solderability preservative
solder joint reliability of a package is essential for electronic (OSP), immersion silver (IAg) and electroless nickel immersion
systems. The ability to predict thermal fatigue life accurately is gold (ENIG) was considered. The test vehicles and coupons are
valuable to the industry because it saves time and cost for subjected to a temperature cycles profile with thermal cycling
product development and optimization. The package attributes between 0°C and 100°C, a 10°C/min ramp rate, and 30 min
and test conditions can be simulated using constitutive dwells.
equations for solders. The solder joint responses such as MIL-HDBK-217 (McLeish, 2010) has had a long history as a
partitioned creep strain, total creep strain, and creep strain tool for use in performing reliability predictions on electronic
energy density are then used to determine the parameters of components and systems. The reliability community in general
damage mechanism based life prediction models (Syed (2004), adopted this tool for their own use. As a result, MIL-HDBK-217
Hegde et al. (2009); Chen et al. (2017)). To predict thermal became and still is the most widely known and used reliability
fatigue life accurately, an appropriate constitutive model, prediction method. However, this traditional approach to
experimentally determined material properties, and finite predicting the long-term reliability of devices in field use assumes
element analysis are required all of these contribute that the components of the system have constant failure rates with
significantly to the accuracy of life prediction of solder joints.
“pi-factor” modifiers to account for various quality, operating, and
Phenomenal-based models are often used to establish the
environmental conditions. Therefore, it is inaccurate for predicting
constitutive relationship of materials. The mechanical behavior
actual field failure events and may result in poor designs.
of solders is viscoplastic because its deformation is rate-
IEEE Standard 1413.1 (IEEE Standard:1413.1-2002, 2003)
dependent. As most solder alloys operate at a high homologous
promotes reliability prediction method of using the load (stress)
temperature even at room temperature, creep and stress
and damage models and provides a summary of the common
relaxation are prominent deformation processes occurring in
methods for reliability prediction of electronic system. Weibull,
solder joints during service. In the past, many constitutive
lognormal or other statistical distributions can be used to describe
models were proposed for solders (Darveaux and Banerji,
hazard rates during both infant mortality and wear-out.
1992; Yi et al., 2000; Wang et al., 2001; Yi et al., 2002; Wiese
However, the failure rate could be different at different stage of
et al., 2002; Ma, 2009). However, though many experimental
life of product and may be a combination of many distributions
studies show the strong influence of microstructure change,
intermetallic compound (IMC) layer formation and void representing many different failure modes. As shown in Figure 1,
formation on solder mechanical properties, these phenomena the single Weibull distribution cannot predict the reliability and
have not been considered in most constitutive relationships. the mean life to failure of solder joints accurately.
Therefore, in general, the life prediction model models based The underestimation of the times to solder joint failures may
on those constitutive relationships are believed to be grossly result in fatal failures. For example, on December 28, 2014,
inaccurate and to over-estimate the thermal fatigue life.
Accelerated testing is a powerful tool to understand a physics Figure 1 Weibull distribution
of failure and improve reliability at different stages of the
product development. The standard JEDEC thermal cycle
conditions are well defined in the JEDEC Standard JESD22-
A104D test specification (JESD22-A104D (2005)). However,
the experimental determination of the fatigue life of the solder
joints in electronic packages is a very time consuming process.
First of all, to conduct accelerated temperature cycle tests,
daisy chained packages are assembled and are mounted on test
boards of various thicknesses. After package assembly on
board, the assembled boards are placed inside thermal cycle
chambers. Then thermal cycles that cover the range of
accelerated conditions typically used by the industry are
applied and in situ resistance is measured to detect solder joint
failures. Then the failure data is further analyzed by the Weibull
analysis software to determine the Weibull parameters and the
mean life. However, the Weibull analysis may underestimate or
overestimate the reliability and the mean life to failure
significantly. Such underestimation or overestimation of the
 Machine learning framework
Sung Yi and Robert Jones
Indonesia Air Asia Flight 8501, an Airbus A320-216, crashed
into the Java Sea during bad weather, killing all 155 passengers
and seven crew on board. On December 1, 2015, Indonesia’s
National Transportation Safety Committee stated that the
cracking of a solder joint of both channel A and B resulted in
loss of electrical continuity and two flight augmentation
computer (FAC) fault, which caused the autopilot and auto-
thrust disengaged and contributed to the subsequent loss of
control and a malfunction in two of the plane’s rudder travel
limiter units (Komite Nasional Keselamatan Transportasi,
2014). On the other hand, the overestimation of the times to
failure may lead to consequently underestimating the
maintenance interval, which may unnecessarily increase the
maintenance cost.
The goal of this study is to propose a general machine
learning (ML) framework to predict the reliability of solder
joints accurately for electronic devices and systems. In this
study, it will be demonstrated how to achieve this goal using the
ML method.
2. Primary factors influencing the reliability of
solder joints
ML models for solder joint reliability assessment can be
constructed from three parts: training data, a set of attributes
that influence the failures of solder joints, and a ML algorithm
to map attributes to reliability. Figure 2 summarizes the
fundamental factors influencing the reliability of solder joints.
2.1 Formations of intermetallic compounds and voids
The Cu/Sn system is one of the simplest metallurgical options
for solder joints. During the reflow, the IMC layer is formed
between the Cu-pad and the solder joint(Zhong and Yi (1999),
Gong et al. (2008), Kim and Yu (2010); Zhong et al. (2010),
Kim et al. (2009); Tseng and Duh (2013), Yoon et al.
(2015); Park et al. (2018)). The longer the reflow time, the
thicker the IMC layer. The IMC formation is believed to be one
of the necessary conditions for a good solder joint. The surface
finish of materials to be jointed also plays an important role in
deciding the joint life and failure modes. Many previous studies
(Zhong and Yi, 1999; Gong et al., 2008; Kim et al., 2009;
Zhong et al., 2010; Yi, 2014; Kim and Yu, 2010; Zhong et al.,
2010; Tseng and Duh, 2013; Yoon et al., 2015) show that the
tensile and shear strengths of IMC layers deteriorate with
Figure 2 Fundamental factors influencing the reliability of solder joints
Soldering & Surface Mount Technology
increasing of their thicknesses. During thermal cycles, the
fatigue failure occurs mainly in the Cu3Sn and Cu6Sn5
interface.
Figure 3 shows the schematic diagram of the IMC formation.
After the reflow process, a thin layer of Cu6Sn5 is formed at the
interface of Cu pads and solders and the thickness of Cu6Sn5
layer increases as the reflow time increases. The thickness of
Cu6Sn5 layer on the bottom pad without Ni barrier on the PCB
side is larger than the one formed near the Ni barrier on the
package side. After thermal cycles or long thermal storage time,
the Cu3Sn layer is formed at the interface of Cu6Sn5 and Cu
in the bottom IMC layer on the PCB side, while it is not formed
in the top IMC layer on the package side since Ni is a good
barrier (Zhong and Yi (1999), Tseng and Duh (2013); Yoon
et al. (2015)). When the ENIG surface-treated substrate is
soldered with SAC solders, the formation of the IMC layer
proceeds to the process. During the reflow, Au that has a high
solubility and a high diffusion rate in the molten solder is
instantaneously dissolved in the solder and the Ni surface is
exposed to the molten solder. Thereafter, Ni is melted as a
molten solder and Ni in the molten solder is supersaturated to
form a (Ni, Cu)3Sn4 layer (Zhong and Yi (1999)). At this time,
Ni3Sn4 or (Cu, Ni)6Sn5 layer may be formed depending on the
type of the solder. Then, in the Ni-P layer, Ni participates in the
formation of (Ni, Cu)3Sn4, and the concentration of P
increases at the top surface of the Ni-P layer. Finally, a very thin
Ni-Sn-P ternary IMC layer is formed between the (Ni,
Cu)3Sn4 layer and the Ni3P layer. This Ni-Sn-P layer has voids
of several nanometers in size, but the mechanism of void
formation has not yet been completely elucidated. Kirkendall
void is considered to be due to the difference in the diffusion
rate between Sn and Ni, and that voids formed in the top layer
of Ni-P during immersion Au process exist in IMC during
soldering. This void formation appears to be one of the main
causes of brittle fracture of the solder joint. The voids of the Ni-
Sn-P layer after reflow are relatively larger in the ENIG than in
the ENEPIG, which is attributed to the fact that the ENIG
brittle fracture reliability is lower than that of ENEPIG (Tseng
and Duh (2013)). Table I shows various IMC layers formed
Figure 3 Schematic diagram of IMC formation on Cu pad
 Machine learning framework Soldering & Surface Mount Technology
Sung Yi and Robert Jones

Table I Intermetallic compound formation

Aging
Reflow temp. temp.(8C)/
IMC Kirkendall void Solder Pad Surface finish (°C)/Time(min) Time(hrs) Reference
Ni3Sn4, (Au, 37Pb/63Sn Cu Electrolytic Ni/ 210/1 150/1000 Zhong and Yi
Ni)Sn4 Au & ENIG (1999)
Cu6 Sn5 Cu3Sn/Cu Sn-3.5Ag Cu 260/1 As Reflowed Kim and Yu
interface (2010)
Cu6Sn5, Cu3Sn Cu6Sn5, Cu3Sn/ Sn-3.5Ag Cu 260/1 150/1000/ Kim and Yu
Cu interface 3000 (2010)
(Cu, Ni)6Sn5, in Ni3 P SAC305 Cu ENEPIG 240/1,3 Tseng and Duh
Ni3P (2013)
(Cu, Ni, Pd)6- in Ni3 P SAC305 Cu ENIG 240/5,10 Tseng and Duh
Sn5, Ni3P (2013)
Ni3Sn4, P-rich Sn-1Ag Cu ENIG 260/ 1,10,30,60 Yoon et al.
Ni (2015)

between Cu-pads and solder joints during the reflow and Figure 4 Crack propagation along the Cu3Sn/Cu6Sn5 interface
thermal storage.

2.2 Mechanical failure modes

Lee et al. (2005) observed three fracture modes have been
observed in the fatigue testing. Those modes include in solder,
mixed solder/IMC and in IMC fracture modes. Mattila and
Kivilahti (2006) also investigated the failure mechanisms in
solder joints after drop testing and also after consecutive
thermal and mechanical loading, using different surface
finishes in copper pads. The test assemblies were thermally
cycled (
45°C/1125°C, 15 min. dwell time, 750 cycles) or
isothermally annealed (125°C, 500 h) before the standard drop
test. The average number of drops to failure increased when the
thermal cycling was performed before the drop test (1,500 G
deceleration, 0.5 ms half-sine pulse). They observed that four
different failure modes:
1 cracking of the reaction layers on either side of the
interconnections;
2 cracking of the bulk solder;
3 mixed mode of component-side intermetallic and bulk
solder cracking; and
4 void assisted cracking of the component-side Cu3Sn layer. and drop test (De Monlevade and Peng (2007), Zhang et al.
Similarly, Lai et al. (2006) reported four failure modes such as (2009); Libot et al. (2018)). Fracture surfaces or interfaces vary
bulk solder failure, pad peeling, mandatory IMC fracturing, and often depend on test methods. The solder ball/bump joint
and IMC fracturing with a certain portion of solders. They failure modes can be divided into six categories below:
observed that most of failures occurred typically at the 1 bulk solder fracture;
interconnection on the package side of along the intermetallic 2 within IMC region: Cu3Sn/Cu6Sn5 interface or (Ni,
phase layer and pad peeling took place on the board side only. Cu)3Sn4, (Cu, Ni)6Sn5;
De Monlevade and Peng (2007) performed JEDEC standard 3 bulk solder intermetallic layer: Solder/Cu6Sn5 interface;
board-level drop testing after thermal aging at three different 4 broken trace lines;
temperatures for different times to study preferred crack 5 void assisted cracking; and
propagation paths in Sn-3.8 per cent, Ag-0.7 per cent, Cu 6 pad cratering.
solder joints and reported that failures occurred typically along The schematic diagram for possible failure modes on a solder
the ternary Cu3Sn/Cu6Sn5 intermetallic layer as shown in ball joint is shown in Figure 5. Table II shows various solder
Figure 4. Libot et al. (2018) studied a crack through the solder joint failure modes reported in the literatures.
joint for the WLP900 assembly and reported that the crack is
located in the solder bulk on the component side.
3. Reliability
Solder ball or bump joints may fracture during various
reliability tests such as isothermal aging, thermal cycling, If t is a random variable denoting the time to failure, the
thermal shock, mechanical loading, bending test, impact test, reliability function at time t can be defined as:
 Machine learning framework Soldering & Surface Mount Technology
Sung Yi and Robert Jones

Figure 5 Failure modes for solder joints where

P ðt > tÞ ¼ 1
P ðt < tÞ ¼ 1
F ðtÞ (6)

The conditional probability function h(t) defined by:

P ðt < t  t 1 Dtjt > tÞ P ðt < t  t 1 DtÞ

hðtÞ ¼ lim ¼ lim
Dt!0 Dt Dt!0 DtP ðt > tÞ
(7)

The conditional function is generally called the hazard rate.

Substituting equations (4) and (6) into equation (7) yields:

f ðtÞ f ðt Þ
hðtÞ ¼ ¼ (8)
RðtÞ ¼ P ðt > tÞ: (1) 1
F ðtÞ RðtÞ

Then the cumulative distribution function of failure F(t)
becomes:
F ðtÞ ¼ P ðt < tÞ ¼ 1
P ðt > tÞ ¼ 1
RðtÞ
where F(t) is the fraction of all units in the population
which fails by time t. If the time to failure t has a probability
density function f(t), then F(t) can expressed as:
ðt
F ðtÞ ¼ f ðt0 Þdt0 (3)
0
where the failure density function f(t) is defined by:
P ðt < t  t 1 DtÞ ¼ f ðtÞDt
The main reason for defining the h(t) function is that it is often
more convenient to work with than f(t). The hazard failure rate
h(t) measures the instantaneous failure, while the failure
(2) density (PDF) is defined as the derivative of the failure
probability and measures the overall rate of failures. In general,
the hazard function is a combination of a decreasing hazard of
early failure, an increasing hazard of wear-out failure, and some
constant hazard of random failure.
The failure times of this population follow a distribution with
a probability density function of f(t), then the population
MTTF can be mathematically calculated by:
ðt ðt
MTTF ¼ RðtÞdt ¼ tf ðtÞdt (9)
(4) 0 0

Sometimes it is more convenient to deal with the

probability of failure between time t and t 1 D t given 4. Multi-Layer Feed-Forward neural network
that there were no failures up to time t. The
Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique is the mimics of
probability of failure between time t and t 1 D t can be
human brain and is capable to elevated functions, such as
defined as:
adaptation or learning, fault tolerance, input-output mapping,
P ðt < t  t 1 DtÞ non-liner function and lower level functions such as data pre-
P ðt < t  t 1 Dtjt > tÞ ¼ (5)
P ðt > tÞ processing for different kinds of inputs. Neural network (NN)
systems are combination of many simple processing elements

Table II Solder joint failure modes

De
Mattila and Monlevade Zhang Putaala
Kivilahti Lai et al. and Peng Lee et al. Wu et al. et al. et al. Libot et al.
Place Failure mode (2006) (2006) (2007) (2005) (2018) (2009) (2014) (2018)
Package Bulk solder fracture x x x x x
side
IMCs interface x x x x x x x x
Solder/ IMCs x x x x x x
Broken trace lines
Void assisted crack x x
Pad cratering
Board side Bulk solder fracture x x
IMCs interface x x x
Solder/ IMCs x x x x
Broken trace lines x
Void assisted crack x
Pad cratering x x
 Machine learning framework
Sung Yi and Robert Jones
which operate in parallel (also called parallel distributed
function) and have been inspired both by human biological
nervous systems and mathematical theories of learning,
information processing and control (Bishop,1995; Haykin,
2009).
A multi-layer feed-forward neural network structure, trained
by back-propagation, is used in this study. In general, an ANN
structure consists of several layers and each layer consists of
several neurons, which is also called processing elements (PE).
Figure 6 shows a typical structure of a feed-forward ANN
model, in which the left column is input layer, the right most
column is output layer, in between input layer and output layer
is a hidden layer. Generally there could be more than one
hidden layer.
The neuron is a processing element (PE) whose output is
calculated by multiplying its inputs by a weight vector,
summing the results, and applying an activation function to the
sum. Each processing element has several inputs and one
output. The relation between input, x, and output, y, of a single
processing element can be expressed as:
! the output of the network and test the prediction capability of
Xm
yi ¼ f wji xj 1 u i (10)
j¼1
where wji are multiplying factors (or weights), u i is a constant
(normally referred to as threshold or bias), m is the number of
inputs, f is called activation function, which is normally selected
from a list of S-shaped functions such as sigmoid, hyperbolic
tangent or similar. Data flow in this type of network is from the
input layer to the hidden layer and there on to the output layer.
5. Solder joint reliability assessment
ML models for solder joint reliability assessment can be
constructed from three parts: training data, a set of attributes
that influence the failures of solder joints, and a ML algorithm
to map attributes to reliability.
To demonstrate the reliability assessment capability based on
ML, the long-term reliability of lead-free Sn96.5Ag3.0Cu0.5
(SAC305) for three commonly used surface finishes such OSP,
ENIG and IAg was evaluated. The failure data reported by
Collins et al. (2012) are employed.
Figure 6 Schematic diagram of multi-layer feed-forward neural
network
Soldering & Surface Mount Technology
5.1 General model and dataset description
The feed-forward neural network created for this study
employs the TensorFlow framework in Python. In this case,
four attributes were used for two distinct categories, namely the
number of cycles to failure and the SAC305 surface finish
treatment. One-hot encoding was used to break-up the surface
finish treatment category into three binary attributes
corresponding to ENIG, Immersion Silver (IAg) and OSP,
respectively.
The complete dataset was divided randomly using seventy-
per cent of the total points for training points, and the
remaining thirty per cent used for testing the trained model. No
artificial discretion was imposed regarding the makeup of the
training and testing data. In some cases, the dataset parsing
may affect the accuracy of the ML model in predicting test
outputs in certain regimes of the model. Increasing the total
dataset size and using categorical discretion are ways to increase
model fidelity. A pseudo-randomized dataset was also created
by modulating the cycles to failure coordinates within the
domain for each surface finish treatment category to plot
the fully-trained model. The pseudo-random points are a
means to examine potential prediction results for range
reasonability, as there are no corresponding failure rate
coordinates for this data. For the complete dataset used for
training and testing data points, the failure rate coordinate was
used to calculate the error that the model output represents.
Both the attributes and the output were pre- and post-
processed using the min-max scaler. In general, it is desirable
that the dataset contain at least one order of magnitude greater
points than the number of features used by the neural network.
For this study, a total of 90 data points were used, which
enabled the ML model to effectively characterize and predict
the trends of the tested solder joint reliability.
5.2 Machine learning model structure
The structure of the network used herein incorporates the input
layer, three hidden layers, and an output layer. The input layer
is comprised of four nodes that take in the scaled attribute data
for each data point and passes it to the nodes in the first hidden
layer. For this model, 50 nodes are used in both the first and
third hidden layers, and the second hidden layer uses 100
nodes. This model is fully-interconnected, meaning that each
node of a layer is passed the output from each of the nodes of
the previous layer. The output layer is also comprised of a single
node, which represents the model prediction of the failure rate
for that data point. The structure of the model used in this
study is shown in Figure 7.
In both training and testing, the mean squared error (MSE)
is calculated between the output layer and the observed failure
rate for the input data as shown in equation (11). The
computed error is used during training by the optimization
algorithm to back-propagate corrections to the parameters of
the hidden and output nodes.
X  
MSE ¼ ^i 2
¼1n Yi
Y (11)
i
Each node of the hidden layers exhibits the same behavior
for the model in this study. Each is characterized by a bias
 Machine learning framework Soldering & Surface Mount Technology
Sung Yi and Robert Jones
 qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 
Figure 7 ML algorithm
w :¼ w
a vcorrected
dw = corrected
sdw 1e (12)

 qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 
b :¼ b
a vcorrected
db = s corrected
db 1 e (13)

The momentum terms (vdw, vdb) and the RMSprop terms (sdw,
sdb) used in equations (12) and (13) are calculated via equations
(14) and (15) using their initialized values, the most current
calculated derivatives (dw, dv) obtained from gradient descent
in the current training mini-batch and pre-defined hyper
parameters ( b 1, b 2).

vdw ¼ b 1 vdw 1 ð1
b 1 Þdw (14a)

vdb ¼ b 1 vdb 1 ð1
b 1 Þdb (14b)

sdw ¼ b 2 sdw 1 ð1
b 2 Þdw2 (15a)

sdb ¼ b 2 sdb 1 ð1
b 2 Þdb2 (15b)

This implementation of the Adam algorithm uses bias

correction through exponential decay of ( b 1, b 2) according to
equations (16) and (17).
and weight, referred to as parameters, and an activation  
vcorrected
dw ¼ vdw = 1
b t1 (16a)
function. The biases are all initialized as zero from the
outset, and the weights are initialized by Xavier
 
initialization designed to keep the scale of gradients vcorrected
db ¼ vdb = 1
b t1 (16b)
consistent in all layers. The activation function determines
the output of the node in response to the node inputs,  
biases and weights. In this study, each node uses a rectified scorrected
dw ¼ sdw = 1
b t2 (17a)
linear unit (relu) which returns zero for any negative value,
or for any positive value returns that value. The relu  
scorrected
db ¼ sdb = 1
b t2 (17b)
function can be written f(x)= max(0, x). The output layer
uses the same bias and weight properties and initialization The learning rate, a, is fixed in this algorithm for all layers at
scheme as the hidden layers. The activation function,
0.001, based on experimental tuning for this implementation.
however, uses direct matrix multiplication of the third
For the remaining hyperparameters, b 1 = 0.9, b 2 = 0.999, e =
hidden layer outputs and the output layer weights, then
10
8 were chosen as recommended in Kingma and Ba (2014).
adds in the output layer biases.
For 2,450 epochs the final training cost was calculated at
1.38  10
4, with a corresponding testing cost of 5.19  10
4.
5.3 ML Model training, testing and modification
For each training epoch, a testing epoch is accomplished using
The model in this study was trained using the training data
the respective dataset. The difference between training and
points randomly selected from the aggregated dataset. The
testing execution is merely that parameter optimization does
points were shuffled and passed into the network for
processing. Each pass through the entire training dataset is not occur after testing. A depiction of the error and its evolution
known as an epoch. At the completion of an epoch of throughout training is depicted below.
training, an optimized differential to each bias and weight is
computed using the vectorized MSE for each point. The 6. Machine learning model results
adaptive moment estimation algorithm (colloquially called
Adam) was used as a computationally efficient alternative to The ML model was trained through 2500 epochs. The
stochastic gradient decent for iterative changes to the resulting cost after each pass through the dataset was logged,
parameters with respect to the objective Kingma and Ba and the completed log was plotted for both the training and
(2014). Adam combines the advantages of gradient descent testing mini-batches, as shown in Figure 8. The final training
with momentum and RMSprop to compute the iterative cost was found to be 1.65  10
4. Because the parameter
parameter corrections. For a given iteration t, Adam modifications result from a training epoch, the testing cost is
computes weight and bias corrections, respectively, as normally higher. The final testing cost in this case was
shown in equations (12) and (13). determined to be 5.53  10
4.
 Machine learning framework Soldering & Surface Mount Technology
Sung Yi and Robert Jones

Figure 8 ML cost versus epochs of training

For each additional epoch of training, it should be noted that

there is a stochastic distribution of the cost function that Figure 9 SAC 305 failure data with ML validation
increases in magnitude after approximately 103 epochs of
training. However, it is also apparent that while the training
smoothed cost function continues to decline, the testing
smoothed cost function declines at a more moderate rate.
Continuous optimization of the ML model is possible to some
extent with additional training, although the diminishing
optimization return for each added epoch should be weighed
against the computational cost of doing so. It was noted
through experimentation that beyond 5000 training epochs, the
stochastic variation of the final training and testing costs did not
exhibit consistently lower cost than the model achieved after
2500 epochs.
The model in this study was tested for predictive capability
after the completion of training. The results for the model
predictions are shown in Figure 9. The actual failure data is
plotted along with the model predictions for a visual
comparison of model fidelity. Additionally, pseudo-
randomized failure data were created for each surface finish
treatment within similar ranges of the original data sets. Those
points were fed into the model to “predict” the failure rate for a
given failure cycle.
The error between the experimental results and the predicted
failures is defined as:
evaluated and are given in Table III. As shown in Table III, the
jMeasured failure
Predicted failurej present ML algorithm predicts the failures of solder joints
Error ¼ (18) much more accurately comparing with the Weibull
Measured failure
distribution.
The average errors for ENIG, IAg and OSP cases based on Substantial improvement in optimization, however, could be
both the present ML algorithm and the Weibull distribution are achieved by increasing the number and distribution of data
 Machine learning framework
Sung Yi and Robert Jones
Table III Average errors for predicted failures
Average errors (%)
Surface treatment ML Weibull (Collins et al. (2012))
IAg 5.2 22.0
ENIG 5.1 11.7
OSP 5.0 21.5
points in each relevant attribute category, to allow the model to
effectively refine its predictions consistent with the behavior of
more complete data sets. While the so-called “10” rule
generally holds true for ML datasets, it is necessary to screen
the data to ensure that rule is complied with in all categories.
For the case of the data used in this study, there were 36 data
points available with respect to both ENIG and IAg surface
finish treatments, but only 19 available for the OSP surface
finish treatment. Because the data was parsed into mini-batches
randomly, it is possible that entire regions of data for a specific
attribute be omitted from training. This is particularly true if
the data is sparse for an attribute in any given region.
In this study, data were weighted for each surface finish
treatment as shown in Figure 10. For the ENIG surface finish
treatment, the mean cycles to failure was 2010.0, with a
standard deviation of 681.2. Similarly for IAg and OSP, the
means were 1605.8 and 2070.9 with standard deviations of
729.4 and 709.5, respectively. It was expected that the fidelity
of model predictions in sparse data regimes used for training
would suffer, for example, at the low or high failure rate
margins. It is interesting to note from the results depicted in
Figure 9 that even in these sparse data regimes, the model is
able to predict in a manner consistent with expected behavior of
both the aggregate data as well as the surface finish treatment
specific curve. The mutual reliance of this model on overall
data behavior and attribute-specific relationships helps
illustrate one powerful capability of ML predictive models.
The model is able to discern the importance of attributes
quite well. Using one-hot encoding, a three-parameter attribute
is broken distinctly into three separate attributes. The training
mini-batch is passed through the model as a whole. The
Figure 10 SAC305 reliability data histogram
Soldering & Surface Mount Technology
relationships between the attributes are learned at the same
time, not individually. Prior to commencing training, the
dataset is shuffled randomly to prevent the model from
‘memorizing’ data and inferring relationships that may or may
not be consequential. As is shown in the previous figures, the
model is able to determine the importance of surface finish
treatment category on its own and therefore applies weights and
biases to accommodate this learned behavior.
7. Conclusions
This method can be used to predict the life of solder joints
accurately. The ability to predict thermal fatigue life accurately
is valuable to the industry because it saves time and cost for
product development and optimization. The proposed method
is applied to predict the long-term reliability of lead-free
Sn96.5Ag3.0Cu0.5 (SAC305) for three commonly used
surface finishes such OSP, ENIG, and IAg to validate its
accuracy and efficiency. The error analysis shows that the
predicted failures based on the ML method are much more
accurate than ones by the Weibull method.
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Corresponding author
Sung Yi can be contacted at: syi@pdx.edu