Solder Powder: IPC "Type" and Surface Area
Solder powder particle size and shape impacts the functionality of solder paste in many ways: printing/dispensing/dipping; solderballing; graping; voi...
Dr. Andy Mackie's Blog
Colored Fluxes: Not Child's-Play
One of the first activities any child enjoys, once they can manipulate things, is using paints and crayons to color pictures. Stay with me: ...
High Melting Pb-free Solder Paste
Dr Ning-Cheng Lee (Indium Corporation‘s Vice-President of Technology) just let me review his team’s excellent upcoming paper on solde...
Tin/Silver Solder Paste in Die Attach (Sn/Ag)
A customer at Semicon West this year asked about Pb-free solder usage in die-attach applications. Although many smaller discrete components ...
Indium Corporation at Semicon West 2011
Many, many thanks to the hundreds of you who came by the Indium Corporation booth at Semicon West this year. Some of you came to hear about ...
Thermocompression Bonding for Microbump Flip-Chip Soldering
For reasons that I will discuss in a post later this year, a common factor that is emerging in the area of copper-pillar microbump 2.5D and 3D jo...
The Limits of Aqueous Flip-Chip Cleaning (I)
This post was prompted by a Korean customer, who this month asked what the limitations are for aqueous (water-based) cleaning for fluxes used in ...
Moving from Silver Epoxy to Solder in Power Semiconductor Packaging
At the time of writing, the price of silver (Ag) was approaching the USD$50/tr.oz. (Troy ounce) level, and threatening to go higher. With 1 Troy ounce...
Electromigration (EM) and Electrochemical Migration (ECM)
I was asked this week to contribute to the upcoming IPC handbook (IPC-CH-65 HDBK) on the section on contamination and its effects on printed wiring as...
Package-on-Package (PoP) Solder Paste
A quick trip to discuss roadmapping with one of the world’s top processor manufacturers, and a visit to discuss Pb-free power die-attach materia...
Epoxy Flux Dipping for CSP and PoP Applications
This week a customer in Asia asked why one of our new epoxy fluxes was not allowing the package-on-package (PoP) device to be picked up from the dippi...
Things I Learned at IWLPC 2010
Once again, here are some things I learned at this year’s IWLPC show 2010 in Santa Clara. Picture below taken at Philadelphia airport,...