An InFORM® is a revolutionary Indium Corporation product: a next-generation solder preform that maintains consisten bondline thickness. SMT industry expert Phil Zarrow interviews Tim Jensen, our Senior Product Manager, for Engineered Solder for more information on this product.
Phil Zarrow: Tim, InFORMS® are an evolution and an improvement on solder preforms. What exactly are they, and what are the differences?
Tim Jensen: An InFORM® is actually the next-generation solder preform used for certain applications. It’s basically a combination of standard solder with an embedded metallic mesh. The purpose of this is that the metallic mesh does not melt during the soldering process, so it allows you to maintain this very consistent bondline thickness.
Phil Zarrow: And what would be the performance advantage of using an InFORM®?
Tim Jensen: You can be very confident that the thermal performance will be repeatable from assembly to assembly, as well as across to an individual assembly. You don’t have any warping of the part, or distortion of the part where you have hot spots in certain locations.
Phil Zarrow: What are the important things that the customer would need to specify in order to determine the best InFORM® means for a given application?
Tim Jensen: The InFORM® is similar to a solder preform in that you need to decide which alloy you want to use. It can be made with standard SAC alloys, tin-lead alloys, high-lead alloys, indium or indium alloys, or any alloy in between there. The additional specification that you need to determine is what bondline thickness you want. And so, based on the performance characteristics of your device you give desired bondline thickness, that’s how we determine what type of mesh to put in there, so we can provide a product that gives you the performance that you’re looking for every time.
Phil Zarrow: Great. And for engineers who want more information at Indium Corporation, what are some of the resources?
Tim Jensen: We have a technical paper, as well as some technical literature on our website, indium.com. Or they can contact me, tjensen@indium.com.
Phil Zarrow: Very good. Tim, thank you very, very much.
Tim Jensen: You’re welcome.