LED Reliability Factors on IMS PCBs

(15:47 + Q&A) Michael Blattau, Ansys
From the 2024 IEEE Symposium on Reliability for Electronics and Photonics Packaging
Summary: LEDs are quickly becoming the dominant lighting solution for many automotive applications. The efficiency and increased design flexibility make them ideal for electrical vehicles over traditional incandescent lights. Designers can select a variety of substrates when designing an LED printed circuit board and many times designers only consider thermal performance. An insulated metal substrate or IMS PCB is commonly chosen when high thermal performance is required, since they are the highest thermally conductive circuit board materials. For maximum thermal conductivity more copper, thinner dielectric and maximum pad attachment is commonly chosen. Solder fatigue is often not considered when selecting the IMS material and the other design parameters such as copper thickness, dielectric thickness, and pad routing. In this presentation we examine how changing the routing, copper thickness, and dielectric properties influence solder joint fatigue. The validity of the FEA approach was first verified using test data of a variety of LEDs on various IMS PCBAs. The life predictions, using an energy-based fatigue model, show good correlation between the FEA life predictions and the experimental data.
Bio: Michael Blattau has 20 years of experience in Electronics Reliability. He is currently a Lead Consulting Engineer at Ansys Reliability Engineering Services, where he has helped hundreds of customers in different industry verticals on electronics reliability issues. Prior to working for Ansys he was a Design Engineering Supervisor for over a decade with an embedded computer manufacturer. He has knowledge of electronics enclosure design, PCB layout, and FEA simulation and has a M.S. in Electronics Packaging.

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