Nupur Jain¹, Piyush Jagtap¹, Allan Bower¹, Eric Chason¹; ¹Brown University

Tin whisker growth is often considered to be a stress-driven phenomenon. We have developed a new system to apply controlled mechanical pressure to Sn layers in order to quantify the stress-driven kinetics of whisker formation. The system is designed to fit in an SEM so that the whisker evolution can be observed in real time. A thin film force sensor is used to measure the applied pressure. We report results for the kinetics of nucleation and growth under applied pressure. Finite element analysis is used to calculate the stress evolution in the layer to relate it to the whiskering.