Environmental-Friendly Electronics: Lead-Free Technology

Citation

Willis, B. (2003), "Environmental-Friendly Electronics: Lead-Free Technology", Soldering & Surface Mount Technology, Vol. 15 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ssmt.2003.21915aae.004

Environmental-Friendly Electronics: Lead-Free Technology

Environmental-Friendly Electronics: Lead-Free Technology

Jennie S. HwangElectrochemical Publications31 chapters, 879 pp., list of tables, figures, illustrations and photographs

Keywords: Environmentally friendly, Electronics, Lead-free soldering

Well it has been a long time coming but it’s worth the wait. The first text book on lead-free soldering technology, I wonder how many more are around the corner or will this be The One! The book is massive with over 800 pages filled with a wide selection of tables, graphs, photographs and some great micrographs in chapter 20 on intermetallic compounds. Well done the team at Sandia National Laboratories; I learnt a lot of useful information here.

Jennie is very well known in the industry through her many workshops and seminars in the USA at APEX and Nepcon plus here work with Universities and technology groups. She has authored a number of text books in the past which have featured some lead-free material but not in detail. She has also found time to contribute an interview on the SMART Group Web site this year; see Engineering Spotlight.

The book opens with a chapter on the pressures on the environment and what is forcing change in manufacture. The second chapter outlines the technology commonly used today and required for the future. This sets the scene in which any environmental policy has to work and of course there are many conflicts. An early chapter in the book also looks at the patents, its amassing just how many there are for alternative alloys and who has filed them. It is a riveting read, but a must know for many researchers in the materials industry.

Jennie has rightly also included a chapter on alternatives to solder with a welcome contribution from Ken Gilleo of Cookson Electronics. Anyone who has had the opportunity to sit in on one of Ken’s workshops will know he has an incredible wealth of experience and it comes through in the text. The chapter reviews the different systems and the advantages and disadvantages. He compares solder and adhesive with its limits and provides application examples for the reader to consider. So are conductive adhesives a solution Well, Gilleo says they do offer many of the solutions but not all. But as a final comparison he states that the human body sends massive amounts of high speed information over polymer wires!

Jennie has broken the discussion on the main alloys considering ternary and binary alloys in separate chapters. Each material is discussed looking at the materials and results on strain and stress measurements, phase transition, wetting issues and in many cases discussing the possible applications. To be fair you need to be a materials scientist or metallurgist to understand these sections and/or argue the validity.

I guess my only real criticism of the book would be a lack of a practical ‘how to do it’ section covering assembly issues which would have been very useful. It would also have made the sales potential for the book even wider than it is. Sammy Shina’s chapter does focus on the assembly process with a full debate on a design of experiment on lead-free soldering but it is the result of a study rather than the issues on process and equipment. The chapter does provide a blueprint for companies considering an experiment and how it could be conducted successfully. Finally the book ends with a chapter on comparison, selections and recommendations which gives everyone the information to move forward.

Nice to see that the team at National Physical Laboratory (NPL) get a number of checks for their work on lead-free. References are made to solderability issues, tin whiskers, reliability of components and of course their contributions to information documents for the DTI.

You could be put off if you casually flick through the book at an exhibition stand due to the daunting number of graphs and tables but do not be. Spend some time reading a section or two and you will find that this is a good investment to your lead-free library.

Finally I was told by one of my colleagues in the SMART Group not to say anything about my small chapter in this book so I have not done so.

Bob Willis