Technical Library | 2008-03-31 21:35:36.0
While the situation varies from country to country, nearly one year after the EU RoHS Directive came into force implementation of lead-free solder is progressing steadily. For lead-free soldering to be considered successful it is not sufficient just to have dealt with the challenges of mass production. It is also necessary to establish that the soldered joints produced are at least as reliable as those made with Sn-37Pb alloy. In this context "reliability" means the length of time in service that the initial functionality of the joint can be maintained. In this paper we will discuss some of the issues involved in solder joint reliability through a comparison of the properties of two alloys that are widely used for lead-free wave soldering, SAC305 (Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu) and the Sn, Cu, Ni, Ge alloy SN100C.
Technical Library | 2017-05-17 22:33:43.0
The selective soldering application requires a combination of performance attributes that traditional liquid fluxes designed for wave soldering applications cannot fulfill. First, the flux deposition on the board needs to be carefully controlled. Proper fine tuning of the flux physicochemical characteristics combined with a process optimization are mandatory to strike the right balance between solderability and reliability. However, localization of the flux residue through the drop jet process is not enough to guarantee the expected performance level. The flux needs to be designed to minimize the impact of unavoidable spreading and splashing events.From this perspective a fundamental understanding of the relationships between formulation and reliability is critical. In this application, thermal history of the flux residues (from room temperature to solder liquidus) is a key performance driver. Finally, it is necessary to conduct statistically designed experiments on industrial selective soldering machines in order to map the relationships between flux characteristics and selective process friendliness.
Technical Library | 2019-01-09 19:19:52.0
The electronics industry has widely adopted Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu solder alloys for lead-free reflow soldering applications and tin-copper based alloys for wave soldering applications. In automated soldering or rework operations, users may work with Sn-Ag-Cu or Sn-Cu based alloys. One of the challenges with these types of lead-free alloys for automated / hand soldering operations, is that the life of the soldering iron tips will shorten drastically using lead-free solders with an increased cost of soldering iron tool maintenance/ tip replacement. Development was done on a new lead-free low silver solder rework alloy (Sn-0.3Ag-0.7Cu-0.04Co) in comparison with a number of alternative lead-free alloys including Sn-0.3Ag-0.7Cu, Sn-0.7Cu and Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu and tin-lead Sn40Pb solder in soldering evaluations.
Technical Library | 2008-03-18 12:36:31.0
This paper examines the construction of a notebook mainboard with more than 2000 components and no wave soldering required. The board contains standard SMD, chipset BGAs, connectors, through hole components and odd forms placed using full automation and soldered after two reflow cycles under critical process parameters. However, state of the art technology does not help if the process parameters are not set carefully. Can all complex BGAs, THTs and even screws be soldered on a single stencil? What will help us overcome bridging, insufficient solder and thombstoning issues? This paper will demonstrate the placement of all odd shape components using pin-in-paste stencil design and full completion of the motherboard after two reflow cycles.
Technical Library | 2017-03-22 20:58:08.0
Water soluble lead-free solder paste is widely used in today’s SMT processes, but the industry is slowly moving away from water soluble solder pastes in favor of no-clean solder pastes. This shift in usage of solder paste is driven by an effort to eliminate the water wash process. Some components cannot tolerate water wash and elimination of water washing streamlines the SMT process. Despite this shift, certain applications lend themselves to the use of water soluble solder paste.This paper details the research and development of a new water soluble lead-free solder paste which improves on the performance characteristics of existing technologies.
Technical Library | 2016-12-29 15:37:51.0
The reliabilities of the flux residue of electronic assemblies and semiconductor packages are attracting more and more attention with the adoption of no-clean fluxes by majority of the industry. In recent years, the concern of "partially activated" flux residue and their influence on reliability have been significantly raised due to the miniaturization along with high density design trend, selective soldering process adoption, and the expanded use of pallets in wave soldering process. When flux residue becomes trapped under low stand-off devices, pallets or unsoldered areas (e.g. selective process), it may contain unevaporated solvent, "live" activators and metal complex intermediates with different chemical composition and concentration levels depending on the thermal profiles. These partially-activated residues can directly impact the corrosion, surface insulation and electrochemical migration of the final assembly. In this study, a few application tests were developed internally to understand this issue. Two traditional liquid flux and two newly developed fluxes were selected to build up the basic models. The preliminary results also provide a scientific approach to design highly reliable products with the goal to minimize the reliability risk for the complex PCB designs and assembly processes. This paper was originally published by SMTA in the Proceedings of SMTA International
