Papers about paste
by Dr. Ning-Cheng Lee
No-clean soldering process is the cheapest available process alternatives in the post-CFC era. In order to enjoy the benefit of no-clean process, care should be taken to assure the cleanliness of products before and after assembly. In addition, the no- clean soldering materials have to be properly formulated in order to deliver the high reliability and adequate flux residue appearance. Due to the elimination of cleaning process, issues such as solder beading, solder balling, probe testability, wire bondability, compatibility with polymeric coatings or wave soldering fluxes have to be addressed. No-clean fluxes typically utilize hydrophobic chemicals and often are in line with RMA flux chemistries. Nitrogen is required if a low residue level is desired for reflow process. Some conventional testing methods may not be adequate for evaluating no-clean soldering materials. Concurrent trends of shifting toward finer pitch, higher reliability, lower residue, and air reflow processes pose a great challenge for no-clean soldering process.
lead-free, pb-free, paste, flux, soldering, solder, no-clean
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Posted on 1 Jan 2009
by Dr. Ning-Cheng Lee , Dr. Benlih Huang
The prospects of 10 major lead-free solder alloys for being widely used for reflow soldering are studied in this work. Compatibility of those alloys with a variety of representative flux chemistries is considered essential, and is determined for performance in handling- ability, including shelf life and tack time, and soldering capability, including solder balling, wetting, and solder joint appearance. Results indicate that the control 63Sn37Pb is still the most compatible alloy, rated 27.1 in compatibility out of a full scale 30 when using warm profile. The primary factor which distinguishes 63Sn37Pb from the rest alloys is the soldering performance, particularly the wetting and solder appearance. As to the solder balling, although 63Sn37Pb is also the best, it is fairly close to the best lead-free systems. Among the lead-free options, both SnAgBi alloys studied here, 91.7Sn3.5Ag4.8Bi and 90.5Sn7.5Bi2Ag, turn out to be on the top of lead-free systems, rated 22.9 and 22.8, respectively. This is mainly attributed to the better wetting and solder balling performance. Shelf life and tack time of the SnAgBi systems are also fairly good, while the solder appearance is at best considered average. The six alloys, 99.3Sn0.7Cu, 95.5Sn3.8Ag0.7Cu, 93.6Sn4.7Ag1.7Cu, 96.2Sn2.5Ag0.8Cu0.5Sb, 58Bi42Sn, and 95Sn5Sb, show fairly comparable performance to each other, with compatibility ranging from 19.3 to 20.3. In general, the whole group displays a quite noticeably poorer wetting than SnAgBi systems. 58Bi42Sn exhibits a fairly poor solder balling performance, but an outstanding solder appearance among lead-free systems. 96.2Sn2.5Ag0.8Cu0.5Sb shows a relatively poor performance in both wetting and solder appearance among these six alloys. 96.5Sn3.5Ag, rated 17.1 in compatibility, is ranked below the other alloys described above, mainly due to poor performance in solder balling, and particularly the poor wetting. 89Sn8Zn3Bi, rated only 2.2 in compatibility, falls far short in every category when compared with all other alloy systems. Obviously, this is attributable to the very reactive nature of zinc, which results in excessive oxidation of metal and excessive reaction with fluxes, and consequently a definitely unacceptable performance for solder paste applications. High-tin-content lead-free alloys seem to display a thicker IMC layer than eutectic SnPb when reflowed.
pb-free, tack time, shelf life, solder appearance, solder balling, wetting, flux, paste, reflow, soldering, solder, lead-free
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Posted on 1 Jan 2009
by Dr. Benlih Huang, Dr. Ning-Cheng Lee
Several unique solder paste systems have been developed and tested for 63Sn/37Pb solder bumping for wafer, CSP, and BGA with the low cost print-detach-reflow process. The results indicate that the bump height achieved is very adequate and consistent for all three area array package systems. Microstructure of solder bumps appears normal. The yield is also very high for both before reflow and after reflow condition, and is dictated by printing performance. With the unique high slump resistance exhibited by those newly developed pastes, the paste transfer efficiency at printing stage becomes the most critical performance for this process. The transfer efficiency increases with increasing area ratio, increasing taper angle, decreasing pitch, decreasing stencil thickness, decreasing challenge, with adoption of square aperture design, and is not sensitive to aspect ratio of aperture to solder particle size. The paste systems appear to have more potential for depositing a larger amount of paste per unit pitch, as evidenced by the linear relation between expected paste volume and the deposited paste volume. Increasing metal content helps improving bumping performance. The bottleneck of increasing bumping performance for wafer applications appears to be developing a stencil manufacturing technology capable of providing an aperture pattern with spacing considerably smaller than the stencil thickness. Slow print speed is also essential for adequate printing. A non-shiny non-smooth stencil surface is considered beneficial for aiding paste rolling. The flux residue of those pastes is cleanable with solvents.
solder, soldering, area array package, Flip Chip, BGA, CSP, sphere, Bumping, paste, flux, fluxless, pb-free, lead-free
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Posted on 1 Jan 2009
by Dr. Ning-Cheng Lee , William Casey
Soldering is the primary interconnection technology for area array packages. Methods for solder bumping for area array packages can be categorized as follows: (1) build-up process, (2) liquid solder transfer, (3) solid solder transfer, and (4) solder paste bumping. The first group includes both evaporation and electroplating processes, while the second group includes meniscus bumping and solder jetting. The third group includes wire bumping, sphere welding, decal solder transfer, tacky dot solder transfer, integrated preform, and pick and-place solder transfer processes, with the last one (pick & place solder transfer) being the current prevailing option. Solder paste bumping exhibits great potential to reduce bumping costs dramatically, and includes the print-detach-reflow, print- reflow-detach, and dispense approaches. For an area array package attachment process, depending on the type of packaging, either flux, fluxless soldering or solder paste printing may be used as the attachment medium. Although area array packaging generally offers a robust process, attention should be paid to reduce defects such as delamination, misalignment, elongated joint, voiding, bridging, opens, cracking, poor wetting and various attachment interactions.
lead-free, pb-free, solder, soldering, area array package, Flip Chip, BGA, CSP, sphere, Bumping, paste, flux, fluxless
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Posted on 10 Mar 2010
