Patent ID: 8056027

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for characterizing an organic substrate including a plurality of circuit layers, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a two-dimensional circuit layer image corresponding to a selected one of the plurality of circuit layers of at least a portion of the organic substrate, the two-dimensional circuit layer image including a geometric description of the selected one of the plurality of circuit layers of the substrate; generating a three-dimensional FEM circuit layer image of at least a portion of the substrate as a function of the received two-dimensional circuit layer image; repeating the steps of receiving a two-dimensional circuit layer image and generating the three-dimensional FEM circuit layer image until all of the plurality of layers in the at least a portion of the substrate have been processed; combining all of the two-dimensional FEM images corresponding to the respective circuit layer images to form a three-dimensional FEM image representing the at least a portion of the substrate; determining at least one of a coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), modulus and Poisson's ratio of the three-dimensional FEM image; and constructing a three-dimensional representation of the at least a portion of the substrate as a function of at least one of the CTE, modulus and Poisson's ratio of the three-dimensional FEM image.