A reinforced solder bump connector structure is formed between a contact pad
arranged
on a semiconductor chip and a ball pad arranged on a mounting substrate. The semiconductor
chip includes at least one reinforcing protrusion extending upwardly from a surface
of an intermediate layer. The mounting substrate includes at least one reinforcing
protrusion extending upwardly from a ball pad, the protrusions from both the chip
and the substrate being embedded within the solder bump connector. In some configurations,
the reinforcing protrusion from the contact pad and the ball pad are sized and
arranged to have overlapping under portions. These overlapping portions may assume
a wide variety of configurations that allow the protrusions to overlap without
contacting each other including pin arrays and combinations of surrounding and
surrounded elements. In each configuration, the reinforcing protrusions will tend
to suppress crack formation and/or crack propagation thereby improving reliability.