Technical Library | 2022-03-16 19:48:18.0
Dendrites, Electrochemical Migration (ECM) and parasitic leakage, are usually caused by process related contamination. For example, excess flux, poor handling, extraneous solder, fibers, to name a few. One does not normally relate these fails with environmental causes. However, creep corrosion is a mechanism by which electronic products fail in application, primarily related to sulfur pollution present in the air.1 The sulfur reacts with exposed silver, and to a lesser extent, exposed copper. This paper will explore various aspects of the creep corrosion chemical reaction
Technical Library | 2023-03-13 19:40:21.0
The present work explores the effects of paper properties on conventional silver-based conducting inks. The effects of smoothness, relative humidity, porosity, permeability and wettability on electrical properties of silver inks on different paper substrates were studied. Another objective of this work was to prepare and study polyaniline synthesized in the presence of different lignosulfonates.
Technical Library | 2022-03-16 19:41:17.0
Creep corrosion occurs in electronics assemblies and it is reminiscent to electromigration but does not require electrical field to drive the reaction. Corrosive elements and moisture must be present for creep corrosion to occur. Sulfur is the most prominent element to cause creep corrosion in environments such as paper mills, rubber manufacturing, mining, cement manufacturing, waste water treatment etc., also including companies and locations nearby such industries. The main part of printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) to be affected is the PCB surface finish. Especially immersion silver is prone to creep corrosion, but it sometimes occurs in NiPd (lead frames), and to a lesser extent in ENIG and OSP surface finishes. As the use of immersion silver is increasing as PCB surface finish and electronics are more and more used in harsh environments, creep corrosion is a growing risk. In this paper we will present the driving forces and mechanisms as well as suitable tests and mitigation strategies against creep corrosion
Technical Library | 2013-07-18 12:12:40.0
Lead-free nanosolders have shown promise in nanowire and nanoelectronics assembly. Among various important parameters, melting is the most fundamental property affecting the assembly process. Here we report that the melting behavior of tin and tin/silver nanowires and nanorods can be significantly affected by the surface oxide of nanosolders.
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Massachusetts
Technical Library | 2021-04-08 00:30:49.0
As the electronic industry moves to lead-free assembly and finer-pitch circuits, widely used printed wiring board (PWB) finish, SnPb HASL, has been replaced with lead-free and coplanar PWB finishes such as OSP, ImAg, ENIG, and ImSn. While SnPb HASL offers excellent corrosion protection of the underlying copper due to its thick coating and inherent corrosion resistance, the lead-free board finishes provide reduced corrosion protection to the underlying copper due to their very thin coating. For ImAg, the coating material itself can also corrode in more aggressive environments. This is an issue for products deployed in environments with high levels of sulfur containing pollutants encountered in the current global market. In those corrosive environments, creep corrosion has been observed and led to product failures in very short service life (1-5 years). Creep corrosion failures within one year of product deployment have also been reported. This has prompted an industry-wide effort to understand creep corrosion
Technical Library | 2018-05-09 22:15:29.0
Creep corrosion on printed circuit boards (PCBs) is the corrosion of copper metallization and the spreading of the copper corrosion products across the PCB surfaces to the extent that they may electrically short circuit neighboring features on the PCB. The iNEMI technical subcommittee on creep corrosion has developed a flowers-of-sulfur (FOS) based test that is sufficiently well developed for consideration as an industry standard qualification test for creep corrosion. This paper will address the important question of how relative humidity affects creep corrosion. A creep corrosion tendency that is inversely proportional to relative humidity may allow data center administrators to eliminate creep corrosion simply by controlling the relative humidity in the data center,thus, avoiding the high cost of gas-phase filtration of gaseous contamination. The creep corrosion relative humidity dependence will be studied using a modified version of the iNEMI FOS test chamber. The design modification allows the achievement of relative humidity as low as 15% in the presence of the chlorine-releasing bleach aqueous solution. The paper will report on the dependence of creep corrosion on humidity in the 15 to 80% relative humidity range by testing ENIG (gold on electroless nickel), ImAg (immersion silver) and OSP (organic surface preservative) finished PCBs, soldered with organic acid flux.
Technical Library | 2020-02-19 23:12:55.0
Silver nanowires (Ag NWs) possess excellent optoelectronic properties, which have led to many technology-focused applications of transparent and flexible electronics. Many of these applications require patterning of Ag NWs into desired shapes, for which mask-based and printing-based techniques have been developed and widely used. However, there are still several limitations associated to these techniques. These limitations, such as complicated patterning procedures, limited patterning area, and compromised optical transparency, hamper the efficient fabrication of high-performance Ag NW patterns. Here, we propose a coat-and-print approach for effectively patterning Ag NWs.
Integrated Microwave Packaging Antennas and Circuits Technology (IMPACT) Lab
Technical Library | 2017-03-09 17:37:05.0
This article focuses on the fabrication and characterization of stretchable interconnects for wearable electronics applications. Interconnects were screen-printed with a stretchable silver-polymer composite ink on 50-μm thick thermoplastic polyurethane. The initial sheet resistances of the manufactured interconnects were an average of 36.2 mΩ/◽, and half the manufactured samples withstood single strains of up to 74%. The strain proportionality of resistance is discussed, and a regression model is introduced. Cycling strain increased resistance. However, the resistances here were almost fully reversible, and this recovery was time-dependent. Normalized resistances to 10%, 15%, and 20% cyclic strains stabilized at 1.3, 1.4, and 1.7. We also tested the validity of our model for radio-frequency applications through characterization of a stretchable radio-frequency identification tag.
Technical Library | 2019-07-17 17:56:34.0
The increased demand for electronic devices in recent years has led to an extensive research in the field to meet the requirements of the industry. Electrolytic copper has been an important technology in the fabrication of PCBs and semiconductors. Aqueous sulfuric acid baths are explored for filling or building up with copper structures like blind micro vias (BMV), trenches, through holes (TH), and pillar bumps. As circuit miniaturization continues, developing a process that simultaneously fills vias and plates TH with various sizes and aspect ratios, while minimizing the surface copper thickness is critical. Filling BMV and plating TH at the same time, presents great difficulties for the PCB manufactures. The conventional copper plating processes that provide good via fill and leveling of the deposit tend to worsen the throwing power (TP) of the electroplating bath. TP is defined as the ratio of the deposit copper thickness in the center of the through hole to its thickness at the surface. In this paper an optimization of recently developed innovative, one step acid copper plating technology for filling vias with a minimal surface thickness and plating through holes is presented.
Technical Library | 2013-01-24 19:16:35.0
The electronics industry has mainly adopted the higher melting point Sn3Ag0.5Cu solder alloys for lead-free reflow soldering applications. For applications where temperature sensitive components and boards are used this has created a need to develop low melting point lead-free alloy solder pastes. Tin-bismuth and tin-bismuth-silver containing alloys were used to address the temperature issue with development done on Sn58Bi, Sn57.6Bi0.4Ag, Sn57Bi1Ag lead-free solder alloy pastes. Investigations included paste printing studies, reflow and wetting analysis on different substrates and board surface finishes and head-in-pillow paste performance in addition to paste-in-hole reflow tests. Voiding was also investigated on tin-bismuth and tin-bismuth-silver versus Sn3Ag0.5Cu soldered QFN/MLF/BTC components. Mechanical bond strength testing was also done comparing Sn58Bi, Sn37Pb and Sn3Ag0.5Cu soldered components. The results of the work are reported.
