Electronics industry has grown immensely over the last few decades owing to the rapid growth of consumer electronics in the modern world. New formulations are essential to fit the needs of manufacturing printed circuit boards and semiconductors. Copper electrolytes for high throwing power applications with high thermal reliability and high throughput are becoming extremely important for manufacturing high aspect ratio circuit boards. Here we discuss innovative DC copper metallization formulations for hoist lines and VCP (Vertical Continues Plating) applications with high thermal reliability and throughput for high aspect ratio PCB manufacturing. The formula has a wide range of operation for current density. Most importantly plating at high current density using this DC high throw acid copper process offers high throughput,excellent thermal reliability,and improved properties for present-day PCB manufacturing. The operating CD range is 10 –30 ASF where microdistribution of = 85 % for AR 8:1 is achievable. This formulation offers bright ductile deposits were plating parameters are optimized for improved micro-distribution and the properties of the plated Cu deposit such as tensile strength and elongation. The Thermal reliability and properties of the deposits were examined at different bath ages. Measured properties are Elongation = 18% and tensile strength = 40,000 psi. All the additives can be easily controlled by CVS (Cyclic Voltammetric Stripping).

Polymer Thick Film (PTF)-based printed electronics (aka Printed Electronics) has improved in durability over the last few decades and is now a proven alternative to copper circuitry in many applications once thought beyond the capability of PTF circuitry. This paper describes peak performance and areas for future improvement. State-of-the-art PTF circuitry performance includes the ability to withstand sharp crease tests,85C/85%RH damp heat 5VDC bias aging (silver migration),auto seat durability cycling,SMT mandrel flexing,and others. The IPC/SGIA subcommittee for Standards Tests development has adopted several ASTM test methods for PTF circuitry and is actively developing needed improvements or additions. These standards are described herein. Advantages of PTF circuitry over copper include: varied conductive material compositions,lower cost and lower environmental impact. Necessary improvements include: robust integration of chip and power,higher conductivity,and fine line multi-layer patterning.

One specific market space of interest to emerging printed electronics is In Mold Label (IML) technology. IML is used in many consumer products and white good applications. When combined with electronics,the In Mold Electronics (IME) adds compelling new product functionality. Many of these products have multi-dimensional features and therefore require thermoforming processes in order to prepare the labels before they are in-molded. While thermoforming is not a novel technique for IML,the addition of printed electronic functional traces is not well documented. There is little or no published work on printed circuit performance and design interactions in the thermoforming process that could inform improved IME product designs. A general full factorial Design of Experiments (DOE) was used to analyze the electrical performance of the conductive silver ink trace/polycarbonate substrate system. Variables of interest include trace width,height of draw,and radii of both top and bottom curvatures in the draw area. Thermoforming tooling inserts were fabricated for eight treatment combinations of these variables. Each sample has one control and two formed strips. Electrical measurements were taken of the printed traces on the polymer sheets pre-and post-forming with a custom fixture to evaluate the effect on resistance. The design parameters found to be significant were draw height and bottom radius,with increased draw and smaller bottom curvature radii both contributing to the circuits’ resistance degradation. Over the ranges evaluated,the top curvature radii had no effect on circuit resistance. Interactions were present,demonstrating that circuit and thermoforming design parameters need to be studied as a system. While significant insight impacting product development was captured further work will be executed to evaluate different ink and substrate material sets,process variables,and their role in IME.

Printed electronics is a familiar term that is taking on more meaning as the technology matures. Flexible electronics is sometimes referred to as a subset of this and the printing approach is one of the enabling factors for roll to roll processes. Printed electronics is improving in performance and has many applications that compete directly with printed circuit boards. The advantage of roll to roll is the speed of manufacturing,the large areas possible,and a reduction in costs. As this technology continues to mature,it is also merging with the high profile 3D printing. 3D printing is becoming more than just a rapid prototyping tool and more than just printing small plastic toys. Companies are embracing 3D printing as a manufacturing approach to fabricate complex parts that cannot be done using traditional manufacturing techniques. The combination of 3D printing and printed electronics has the potential to make novel products and more specifically making objects electrically functional. Electrically functional objects have the advantage of competing with printed circuit boards. Printed circuit structures will be a new approach to electronic packaging. It is the desire of many companies to reduce assembly processes,decrease the size of the electronics,and do this at a reduced cost. This is challenging,but the potential of printing the structure and the electronics as a single monolithic unit has many advantages. This will reduce the human touch in assembly,as the electronics and the object are printed. This will increase the ruggedness of the product,as it is a monolithic device. This will eliminate wires,solder,and connectors,making the device smaller. This has the potential to be the future of printed circuit boards and microelectronic packaging. This paper will show working demonstrations of printed circuit structures,the obstacles,and the potential future of 3D printed electronics.

Bottom terminated components,or BTCs,have been rapidly incorporated into PCB designs because of their low cost,small footprint and overall reliability. The combination of leadless terminations with underside ground/thermal pads have presented a multitude of challenges to PCB assemblers,including tilting,poor solder fillet formation,difficult inspection and –most notably –center pad voiding. Voids in large SMT solder joints can be difficult to predict and control due to the variety of input variables that can influence their formation. Solder paste chemistries,PCB final finishes,and reflow profiles and atmospheres have all been scrutinized,and their effects well documented. Additionally,many of the published center pad voiding studies have focused on optimizing center pad footprint and stencil aperture designs. This study focuses on I/O pad stencil modifications rather than center pad modifications. It shows a no-cost,easily implemented I/O design guideline that can be deployed to consistently and repeatedly reduce void formation on BTC-style packages.

Voids in solder joints plague many electronics manufacturers. Do you have voids in your life? We have good news for you,there are many excellent ways to “Fill the Void.” This paper is a continuation of previous work on voiding in which the following variables were studied: water soluble lead-free solder pastes,a variety of stencil designs,and reflow profiles. Quad Flat No-Lead (QFN) component thermal pads were used as the test vehicle. The voiding results were summarized and recommendations were made for reduction of voiding. In this work several new variables and their effects on voiding were studied. No clean lead-free solder pastes were tested and compared to water soluble lead-free solder pastes. Water soluble solder pastes tend to create more voiding than no clean solder pastes. This is due to the relatively higher volatile content in water soluble solder pastes,and also due to the hygroscopic nature of water soluble solder pastes. The particle size of the solder powder was studied; using IPC type 3,IPC type 4 and IPC type 5 powders. The oxide content of the solder powder increases with decreasing particle size and higher oxide content tends to produce higher voiding levels. Different manufacturers of solder powder were also studied. Solder powder from one manufacturer might lead to higher voiding than from another manufacturer. Finally,the effects of convection reflow were compared to vapor phase reflow with and without vacuum. Convection reflow is commonly used and voiding results from this type of reflow are well documented. Vapor phase reflow is conducted in an oxygen free environment which tends to reduce voiding. Vapor phase systems also lend themselves well to the use of vacuum because the equipment is sealed and vapor tight. Integrating vacuum creates differential pressure between the void and the surrounding atmosphere during the liquid stage which facilitates the escape of the trapped gases. The lowering of the gas pressure outside the solder joints will aid in reduction of voiding. Reworking solder joints with voids is not an easy task. This typically involves removing the affected components and re-soldering them with the hope that voiding might be reduced. This is a very labor intensive process which can thermally stress nearby components. The possibility of using a vapor phase reflow system with vacuum to rework solder joints with voids was investigated. In many cases voiding will be reduced only if a combination of mitigation strategies are used. Recommendations for combinations of solder paste,stencil design,reflow profile,and type of reflow are given. The aim of this paper is to help the reader to “Fill the Void.”

Counterfeit electronic components are finding their way into today’s defense electronics. The problem gets even more complex when procuring DMS (diminishing manufacturing source) parts. This paper will provide a brief introduction to counterfeit prevention and detection standards,particularly as they relate to the Aerospace and Defense sector. An analysis of industry information on the types and nature of counterfeit components will be discussed in order to illustrate those most likely to be counterfeited,followed a specific case at a major defense contractor. The case involved two circuit card assemblies failing at test,whereby their root cause for failure was identified as “unable to write specific addresses at system speeds”. The error was traced to a 4MB SRAM received from an approved supplier. Fifteen other suspect parts were compared with one authentic part directly purchased from a supplier approved by the part manufacturer. Defects or anomalies were identified but not enough to unequivocally reject these parts as counterfeit as the defects could have also happened in the pre-tinning process,which is a program-specific requirement if the parts were stored for more than 3 years. Through the subsequent analysis,subtle differences between the authentic and suspect parts were identified and isolated. The methodologies and process chosen to identify counterfeit parts will be reviewed and an assessment of the results will be presented along with the defects found in relation to the defect types reported in relevant test standards.

As DMSMS and Obsolescence relate to printed circuit boards (PCB),there is an ever increasing need for maintaining spare and replacement boards for legacy systems that are operating well past their intended lifecycle. This is especially true in the transportation,medical,automotive,aerospace and military industries. Many times,the original manufacturer is no longer in business or no longer has the fabrication data. In these cases,there is the urgent need to precisely regenerate this manufacturing data from existing remaining parts,film,paper drawings,etc. Exact “Form,Fit and Function” is required so newly fabricated PCBs will “handshake” or integrate properly with existing systems and to avoid costly environmental or functional testing. Replacement parts that are not identical in all ways to the original parts must be treated as a new design,which is a very expensive and time consuming proposition. There are many techniques that have been used to re-engineer PCB’s. Each has distinct advantages and disadvantages. Some of the techniques covered in this paper are:
-Manual hand probing for Bill of Materials (BOM) and Netlist generation,
-Optical and X-ray imaging systems for capturing connectivity and PCB geometry information.
-Flying Probe Test (FPT)and Bed of nails test systems for obtaining and validating connectivity information
-Techniques that create data in usable formats,and even permit information to be imported into Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems,etc.
Optical and X-ray images of internal PCB layers will be presented along with discussion about the pros and cons of each image acquisition process. Destructive and non-destructive techniques used for obtaining inner layer PCB information will be discussed. The required manufacturing data formats such as Gerber/Drill data,IPC-2581,etc. can be generated using some of the PCB Re-engineering techniques that are presented in this paper. Other data formats required for board testing and repair,such as Netlist (IPC-D-356A) and Schematics,will be covered in detail. In some cases,replacement components may no longer be available and some redesign may be needed which requires moving the data back into a CAD system. In addition,some organizations use these processes to “miniaturize” existing PCBs while maintaining existing functionality. This paper provides a basic understanding of the various techniques for PCB Reengineering that are available today in support of addressing DMSMS and Obsolescence as they related to TLCM.

In recent years,a growing number of electronic devices are being incorporated into automotive and other high reliability end products where the challenge is to make these devices more reliable. The package size of the devices is largely driven by the consumer industry with their sizes getting smaller making it harder to assemble and be reliable at the same time. For automotive and other high reliability electronics product,it is of the utmost priority to secure high reliability because it directly involves human life and safety. Challenges include selecting an appropriate solder alloy and having good reliability of the solder paste flux. For solder alloys,much development has been done and is in progress. For the solder paste flux,it is important that the flux intended for automotive and other high reliability applications should have reliable insulation resistance even in an atmosphere of high temperature and high humidity. To meet these requirements,a type of ‘crack free' flux paste was developed to inhibit cracking under extreme environments making it more reliable with stringent surface insulation resistance and electro-migration criterion from automotive and other high reliability product manufacturers. Crack-free flux residues help to prevent electro-chemical migration caused by moisture entering through the flux residue cracking. In addition,crack-free residues act as a type of conformal coating providing a consideration to assemble without conformal coating use for certain applications. Experiments were carried out to test the reliability of the flux according to various industry electro-chemical migration and dew test standards using IPC and JIS (Japan Industrial Standard) test boards. The flux residue showed no indication of cracking after pre-conditioning from-30°C to 80°C accelerated thermal cycling for 1,000 cycles followed by testing with no evidence of electro-chemical migration with a variety of board line widths and spacings used on the test boards. Printing,wetting,voiding and reflow tests with components were also carried out to make sure that the developed solder paste was appropriate for high volume manufacturing with results reported.

It is well known that structures at fine pitches with flux residues are more susceptible to corrosion issues and electrochemical migration (ECM) problems. Characterization of flux residues in terms of ECM are commonly characterized using SIR testing. A key parameter of the SIR test is the comb pattern used and gap between the electrodes. The current B24 and B25 with their 500 and 318µm gap patterns are not representative of fine pitch. It has been proposed to use a 200µm gap pattern,and this paper describes an intercomparison that validates the introduction of the 200µm gap pattern. A new test board was used that included the B24 and B25 patterns with an additional 200µm pattern,with each pattern duplicated,giving six in all. This work was motivated by an update to the current IEC 61189-5-501[1]. A protocol for the testing was developed that took a standard test rosin flux and defined the flux loading and thermal conditioning. Seven laboratories took part from five countries. The test boards were prepared centrally and then tested in the seven laboratories,and the results analyzed to validate the usage of the 200µm pattern. The paper describes the intercomparison and the data analysis.