Sep 14, 2011 The SMTA announced a session on QFN Assembly and Reliability will take place on Tuesday, October 18 during their annual conference, SMTA International, in Ft. Worth, Texas. Andrew Mawer of Freescale Semiconductor will chair the session and Viswam Puligandla, Ph.D., Nokia (Retired) will co-chair.
The session covers the assembly and reliability of Quad Flat Pack No Lead (QFN) packages which are sometimes referred to as Bottom Termination Components (BTC). Presentations will outline the benefits and also the challenges of using QFNs which can include voiding, opens, shorts, insufficients and entrapped flux volatiles. Focus will be given to board-level reliability of QFN when used with various Pb-free alloys with comparisons to SnPb. The issue of QFN thermal pad solder voiding will also be addressed in detail with a focus on how thermal performance of the package is affected. Papers will be presented by speakers from AIM, Alcatel-Lucent, Plexus Corp., and Indium Corporation.
Session chair Andrew Mawer of Freescale Semiconductor commented, "The main challenges assemblers face when using QFN are control of voiding in exposed pads, cleaning flux residues under the low stand-off and guaranteeing consistently reliable perimeter solder joints. These challenges are only expected to increase as pitches go to 0.4 mm and below and multiple row and array QFNs with increased IO counts become more common. These challenges will be addressed in this session."
http://smta.org/smtai/tech.cfm#aat1
Details about SMTA International can be found online at http://smta.org/smtai or contact SMTA administrator JoAnn Stromberg: 952-920-7682 or joann@smta.org.
The SMTA membership is an international network of professionals who build skills, share practical experience and develop solutions in electronic assembly technologies, including microsystems, emerging technologies, and related business operations.
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