There are two main driving forces that are causing the electronics industry to take a look at alternatives to hot air solder leveling (HASL) as a surface finish for printed wiring boards (PWB). First,finer pitch array packages like micro-BGA and chip scale packages are being used in increasing volumes and for a broader variety of devices. With reducing pitches,and thus smaller ball diameters,it becomes necessary to have a predictably flatter surface in order to achieve a consistently more reliable solder joint. The inherent nature of the HASL process to leave inconsistent and uneven topographical profiles of the PWB pad surface,has been well observed and documented. Alternative finishes such as organic solderability preservative (OSP),immersion tin,immersion silver,electroless nickel/immersion gold (ENIG),etc.,have been proven to provide the flatness desired – several orders of magnitude flatter than HASL. The second reason to consider HASL alternatives is the move toward lead-free electronics,particularly in Europe and Japan. With legislation already approved in Europe and a strong focus on environmental marketing in Japan,the demand on PWB fabricators to produce “unleaded” product will no doubt see a marked increase over the next several years. In the United States,organizations such as IPC,the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI),and others have been heavily involved in research activities related to lead-free materials over the last several years. Although the US has not produced any legislative mandates (as of this writing) on the removal of lead from electronics,research activities are ongoing.

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Lead-free manufacturing is becoming an industry initiative for environmental and legislative reasons. Lead-Free processing is rather new to the industry and the development of a successful assembly process requires collaboration among the end user,the component and board suppliers,and the electronics manufacturer. This paper will document the Phase 1 development plans and results for converting a surface mount network card into a lead free product. Phase 1 involved changing the eutectic tin-lead solder paste used in manufacturing to a lead-free paste (Sn3.9Ag0.6Cu),use a lead-free surface finish PCB (Immersion Silver),and a lead free PBGA component. The higher process temperature of the lead-free solder paste poses greater risk to the component materials which were not made to withstand these higher temperatures. A statement of work and a development plan to certify the process according to the product and process qualification requirements were created. The development plan included the statistical design of experiments and process and product qualification requirements. The certification plan included four separate lead-free manufacturing builds,with functional and ICT contact resistance testing,followed by multiple reliability tests. The lead-free manufacturing builds revealed issues such as connector material blistering due to the higher processing temperatures and the insufficient solder joints on the LED soldered component. Root cause analysis was performed and defect reduction plans were implemented. The results demonstrated the capability to build a lead-free SMT network product. Reliability test data further confirmed that the lead-free product assembled met all the customer’s product qualification requirements.

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A growing need is developing in the high-speed digital arena (backpanels,motherboards,line cards etc) for materials offering sufficient signal integrity for applications up to 10 Gbps. One solution is a PTFE/ fiberglass/thermosetting resin composite1 that can be processed at conventional PCB pressures and temperatures. Because the PTFE can be applied in a high volume process by a PTFE processor and the thermosetting resin can be applied in a large scale manufacturing process using commercial treaters,the volume manufacture of PTFE based laminates can be achieved in a cost effective fashion. The prepregs and laminates are based on a PTFE/fiberglass/BT-epoxy composite that is treated with 10-40 wt% of a thermosetting resin. The resulting composite has demonstrated signal integrity in a 20 layer backplane that is very competitive relative to a pure PTFE/fiberglass construction2. The hybrid has a very low dissipation factor when 15-40 wt% thermosetting adhesive is used (0.004-0.005 at 14.5 GHz). The PTFE/fiberglass/BT-epoxy composite provides good bonding to substrates at conventional processing temperatures,gap filling of 2 oz circuitry,very high thermal stability,and predictable movement. Preliminary results suggest that the materials drill better than standard PTFE boards.

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All-aromatic polyester,one of the super engineering plastics,is highly regarded as a base material of electronic circuit for its environmental compatibility,moisture resistance,dimensional stability and heat resistance. With Type I all-aromatic polyester having the highest heat resistance of the three types of aromatic polyesters,we succeeded in making it into a film material with a highly controlled orientation. This liquid crystal polymer film,hereinafter referred to as LCP FILM (I),has great solder heat resistance up to 280?C and high dimensional stability. Its Coefficient of Hygroscopic Expansion is 1.5 ppm/% and the Coefficient of Thermal Expansion is controllable to match with that of copper foil (16ppm/ ?C). In addition,LCP FILM (I) has very low water absorption of 0.1%,which is approximately 1/10 that of polyimide film,and shows great performance in a high frequency range. It is also notable that LCP FILM (I) is a recyclable material as its raw material is thermoplastic resin. Having these advantages,applications of LCP FILM (I) have been expanded to PWB and IC packages for IT-related devices that require HDI and high frequency performance.

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Advances in information/communications technology are transforming the Internet from a medium for searching for information into a medium for providing and receiving various types of information and services. As the number of users and the variety of services continue to grow,there are increasing demands for a more comfortable environment--an environment that allows "quicker on demand access to more information,which is presented with better realism." In order to make such an (Internet) environment a reality,we need to be able to exchange a large amount of information within a short space of time. This in turn makes it necessary to accelerate signal speed,or to increase the signals frequency. Printed wiring boards used for handling high-frequency signals are required to have lower levels of transmission loss so as to maintain and ensure signal quality. From the viewpoint of copper foil,which provides the basis of conductive trace,the main concerns are as follows: (1) increases in conductor loss (one of the factors behind transmission loss) and (2) declines in bonding strength to resin (declines in trace bonding strength) resulting from reductions,(which is intended for minimizing dielectric loss),of the dielectric constants and dissipation factors of substrates. This paper discusses the findings of our examination of the issues above.

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