Metal Loading in Solder Paste - A Review (Part 1)
Three IPC test methods are used to guarantee to customers that they are getting the same material (within agreed tolerances). However o...
Semiconductor Packaging
Dartmouth Student Asks Questions About SACm® Solder Alloy
Folks, Some years ago, a leading IC manufacturer decided that their R&D effort could benefit if analyzed for possible improvement – by hirin...
Ronnie Spraker and the World’s Only NanoFoil®/NanoBond® Production Team
Ronnie Spraker is the supervisor of our NanoFoil® production department. Everyday, Ronnie and his team make reactive foils that are used all over ...
RDSON and Solder Volume Resistivity
Interesting question from a Chinese die-attach customer this week asking about volume resistivity of solder. My friend, Eric Bastow, suggested that In...
Marcy Nanocenter Semiconductor Fab
You may remember that, a couple of years ago, I wrote an article for Chip Scale Review magazine about plans for a major semiconductor facility (the Ma...
Manufacturing Indium with Pride
I recently caught up with Brent Boek, Supervisor of the indium cell at our Utica Business Park manufacturing facility in New York. Brent and his crew ...
Leadframe Solderability Issues in Power Semiconductors
It is no secret that automotive semiconductor customers are becoming increasingly demanding. The “under the hood / bonnet” electronics env...
3D Electronics
Browse the coming attractions at your local movie theater. How many 3D movies are being advertised? 3D is a very exciting technology for m...
Musings on Electronics Assembly Metals: Gold Unified a Country
Folks, In Ken Burn’s excellent miniseries The Civil War, Shelby Foote states that the Civil War made us a country by uniting No...
Semiconductor Pictorial Roadmap: Semicon West 2012
One of the things that bring customers over to our semiconductor tradeshow booths, year after year, is the pictorial roadmap. This is the diagram ...
Cold Welding Indium Metal
Indium metal has the unique ability to cold weld (bond) to itself at room temperature. Though this is, technically, not soldering, this property makes...
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...