EFFECT OF FLUX SYSTEMS ON ELECTROCHEMICAL MIGRATION OF LEAD-FREE ASSEMBLY
The reliability concerns regarding surface insulation resistance (SIR) and electrochemical migration (ECM) have been significantly raised in the printed circuit board (PCB) assembly with wide adoption of lead-free assembly materials and process. Moreover, the miniaturization trend of the electronic industry also increases the sensitivity of the functional assemblies to surface contamination and flux residues. There are numerous SIR reliability testing methods and standards, such as IPC, JIS, Bellcore, and Bono, whose predictive power will depend on the field of application including temperature, relative humidity and electric field. Each standard is limited in essence, because the failure mechanism is strongly affected by the chemistry of the assembly materials, e.g. soldering flux, paste, and substrate materials, which will perform differently under various conditions. This paper presents a summary and comparison of the major SIR reliability standards currently in use in the industry, and discusses the impact of the different flux systems on the failure mechanisms.
“ PARTIALLY-ACTIVATED ” FLUX RESIDUE IMPACTS ON ELECTRONIC ASSEMBLY RELIABILITIES
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 “partiallyactivated” 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.
Traceability strategy for gear-pitch-measuring instruments: development and calibration of a multiball artifact
There is a strong demand to ensure the traceability of gear-measuring instruments (GMIs). We propose a multiball artifact (MBA) for the evaluation of pitch-measuring accuracy. The aim of the MBA is to transfer the minimum uncertainty from a calibrated value at the National Metrology Institute of Japan (NMIJ) to a measured value of GMIs at a shop floor. The MBA is composed of equally spaced high-accuracy balls around an axis. The pitch-measuring accuracy of GMIs is evaluated by measuring the angular pitch deviation of the balls instead of the angular pitch deviation of a gear. We calibrated the angular pitch deviation using a coordinate measuring instrument (CMM) at the NMIJ and adapting a multiple-orientation technique. We proposed a calibration strategy of the angular pitch deviation. The calibration value of the pitch deviation for the MBA at the NMIJ was obtained with a measurement uncertainty (U95) of 0.2 µm. We evaluated the pitch-measuring accuracy of a GMI using the calibrated MBA. Each value of U95 for the cumulative and single pitch deviations for the left and right flanks was less than or equal to 0.5 µm. The small uncertainty was transferred from the NMIJ to the GMI.