Development of Baseline Lead-free Rework and Assembly Processes for

Large Printed Circuit Assemblies

Patrick Roubaud1, Jerry Gleason2, Charlie Reynolds3, Ken Lyjak4, Matt Kelly5, Jasbir Bath6
1
Hewlett Packard, Grenoble, France
2
Hewlett Packard, Palo Alto, California USA
3
IBM, East-Fishkill, New York USA
4
IBM, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina USA
5
Celestica Inc., Toronto, Canada
6
Solectron , Milpitas, California USA

Abstract
A cross-company workgroup was formed to develop a baseline lead-free manufacturing process using the NEMI tin-
Silver-Copper (Sn3.9Ag0.6Cu) alloy for medium to high-end computer products. The primary attachment assembly
and rework processes investigated by this group are illustrated in this paper along with a presentation of the
reliability qualification test plan.

Introduction temperatures characteristic of the lead-free assembly

In 1999 the prospective of a legal ban on lead in
electronic goods prompted the National Electronic
Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI) to recommend the
lead-free alloy Sn3.9Ag0.6Cu as the best available
option for surface-mount reflow applications [1].
Several NEMI projects were launched to help develop
the capability to manufacture lead-free Printed Circuit
Assemblies (PCAs) [2].
Those studies brought a good level of confidence
regarding the reliability of the lead-free solder joints
formed with surface mount and wave soldering
technologies. However the rework operations still
represent a major technical difficulty [3] because of
the relatively high temperature applied to the printed
circuit boards and the components. This issue is even
more critical when working with relatively thick
boards and multiple thermal excursions.
A trans-company NEMI workgroup was created to
continue to develop and verify a baseline rework
process for large and thick lead-free PCAs which are
characterized by components with a wide range of
thermal masses on large high thermal masse cards.
The workgroup is formed by 19 companies of the
electronic industry and 1 university. The group
started activities in 2002.
The overall project was divided in 3 phases. Phases 1
and 2, the lead-free assembly and rework process
development studies, were finished toward the end of
Q3 2003. Test boards for the process qualification
(phase 3) have been assembled. The accelerated
thermal cycling experiments are in progress at the
time of the publication of this paper.
and rework operations. It has a glass transition
temperature (Tg) of 180°C and a decomposition
temperature of 327°C.
It was important to verify as early as possible in the
study if this new laminate material was compatible
with the high temperatures imposed by the lead-free
assembly process and the lead-free rework process.
The specification is for this material to withstand at
least 6 thermal excursions to 260°C. To answer this
question, we thermally stressed 7 test coupons by
having an electrical current running thought a daisy
chain. The coupons were 93 mils thick. The result
showed that this material can resist to more than 6
thermal excursions to 260°C. This laminate material
(at this time) is therefore believed to be compatible
with the temperature used by our processes.
Process development and test vehicles
Two different kinds of boards were used to develop
and qualify assembly and rework processes. The first
one was used during phases 1 and 2. The second one
was used for the process qualification build (phase 3).
Those board designs are based on existing industrial
boards used for process development and
qualification. They are used to work on the
challenges encountered when dealing with fairly large
and thick boards carrying a variety of component
types including SMT and PTH components, big
array packages, leaded packages, small and large
passives and various kind of connectors. During the
course of the overall study a total of about 900
boards have been built. Table 1 summarizes some of
their characteristics and a picture of the qualification
board can be seen in Figure 1.

High Tg Laminate Material

The laminate material used for our study is a fairly
new material, designed to sustain the high
 assembly process has been achieved before the build
of the test boards.

The lead-free SMT process developed gave a yield

close to 95% which was comparable with the yield
obtained with the Sn-Pb paste. The peak temperatures
were recorded at 248ºC for the 3.4 mm thick boards
and 243ºC for the 2.3 mm thick board. For
comparison, the peak temperatures recorded for the
Sn-Pb process were 210 and 211ºC respectively. The
temperature gradient across the board was 14ºC and
most of it was due to the presence of ceramic
packages.
The biggest challenge was to minimize the
temperature gradient across the board while keeping
the process time at a reasonable level. For the lead-
free 3.4 mm thick board, the time above liquidus was
Figure 1 – Top and bottom sides of the process between 90 and 120 seconds. The overall cycle time
qualification board. was 8 minutes. The thermal profile can be seen on
Figure 2.
Table 1 – Some characteristics of the boards used
for this study
Development Qualification
board board
Thickness 2.3 mm 2.3 and 3.4 mm
Dimensions 330 x 254 mm 432 x 178 mm
Number of 2 14
copper layers
Tg 180°C 180°C
Decomposition 327°C 327°C
temperature
Surface finish OSP and Electrolytic Ni-
ENIG Au and
immersion Ag
Figure 2 – SMT thermal profile, Qualification
Each site of the qualification board has copper traces board, 3.4 mm thick, top side, lead-free.
that follow a daisy chain pattern to enable electrical
continuity inspection when daisy chained Wave soldering process
components are used. Given the small amount of data available regarding
the lead-free wave soldering process, gaining
Assembly process (phase 1) knowledge on the process fundamentals was the
Both Surface Mount Technology (SMT) and wave primary focus here. Both conventional and selective
soldering processes were investigated by the NEMI wave soldering processes were investigated. The
workgroup. objectives were to define and optimize the process
window by determining acceptable temperature ranges
SMT Process for the lead-free wave solder process. As with the
The SMT process was developed with the main SMT process, the impact of differences between
objective to determine the process window for the surface finish and board thickness were quantified.
reflow temperature that yields acceptable lead-free
joint formation. A constraint the group gave to itself The defects recorded on PTH components by visual
was to use in-line processing configurations and inspection were:
process time windows compatible with industrial - solder skips
throughputs. An additional goal was to minimize the - Insufficient solder
temperature gradient across the second level assembly - solder bridging
during the SMT reflow process. As with previous - lifted connectors
work [4], component temperatures (body and joint),
along with temperature gradient information were Rework Process (phase 2)
communicated to JEDEC to assist in updating the The rework process was performed at production
specification J-STD-02B. The process was finalized sites, using production rework tools.
at manufacturing locations to ensure that a robust
Reworking large lead-free BGAs on thick boards is
difficult because of the high temperatures involved.
The solder joint time over reflow (217°C) must be
between 45 and 90 seconds. Practically, we found a
necessity to have a minimum solder joint temperature
of 230-235°C to ensure good wetting. The current J-
STD-020B standard is calling for a maximum body
temperature of 245-250°C for the larger components.
The margin of error to maintain a lead-free minimum
solder joint temperature of 230-235°C with a body
temperature of 245-250°C is very tight. For
comparison, when using the Sn-Pb paste the thermal
window is two times larger with a temperature
having to be somewhere between 200 and 240°C.

It was found that increasing the bottom side board

preheat was effective in reducing the temperature
gradient between the solder joint and the component
body. Figure 3 shows a schematic of the apparatus
used. The thermal profile used for the CBGA is
presented in Figure 4. Figure 5 illustrates CBGA
solder joints after the rework operation.

Thermocouple
Locations Pick-up
Tool
Nozzle

Adjacent Component
PCB
Air Flow
Bottom Heater
Figure 3 - Rework setup used to minimize the
temperature gradient between the solder joint and
component body. Courtesy: Gowda et al. (SUNY-
Binghamton, Universal Instruments) [3]
Figures 5 – PBGA solder joints after rework. Top
view: Sn-Pb solder joints. Bottom view: Sn-Ag-Cu
solder joints.
Another difficulty was the excessive temperature
reached by components adjacent to the rework area. In
some cases it was not possible to avoid a partial
reflow of some adjacent solder joints. For example, it
was noticed that a CBGA seems to undergo partial
double reflow during the rework of an adjacent micro-
BGA. As one can see on Table 2, the issue of high
adjacent temperatures is more acute with the lead-free
rework process and with the thicker boards. The
impact on the reliability will be evaluated and
presented in a future paper.

Table 2 – recorded rework cycle length and

temperatures for the 544 PBGA
Sn-Pb Sn-Pb Pb-free Pb-free
2.3 3.4 2.3 mm 3.4 mm
mm mm
Thermal
profile time 340 sec 360 sec 432 sec 468 sec
length
Minimum
peak solder 202ºC 201ºC 234ºC 233ºC
Figure 4 – Thermal profile for the rework of the
joint
lead-free CBGA on a 3.4 mm thick board. Time
temperature
above liquidus: 66 seconds. Solder joint
temperature: 235°C. Top of the package Component
temperature: 238°C top 217ºC 217ºC 245ºC 245ºC
temperature
Temperature Table 4 – Components selected for the reliability
at 3.8 mm 217ºC 227ºC 217ºC 227ºC study
from the Component Characteristic
PBGA CBGA 32.5 x 32.5 mm , 937 I/O ,
1 mm pitch
Reliability qualification phase (phase 3) TSOP 48 I/O
The goal of the qualification phase is to evaluate the Micro BGA 17 x 17 mm , 256 I/O , 1
impact of: mm pitch
- the solder paste alloy (Sn-Pb or Sn-Ag-Cu), PBGA 35 x 35 mm , 544 I/O , 1.27
- the rework operation, mm pitch
- the PCB thickness, DIP 16 I/O
- the nature of the PCB surface finish, 2512 resistor
on the reliability of the solder joints.
DIMM Connector 278 pins , 1 mm pitch
The reliability evaluation phase is organized around 2
tests: an accelerated thermal test (ATC) and a ATC
mechanical bend test. The ATC was selected because The ATC experiment is following the JEDEC
it is a test widely used among the industry to JESD22-A104B recommendations. As shown in
characterize the solder joint resistance to thermal Figure 6, the actual thermal profile maximum and
fatigue. In addition some ATC studies [5] [6] [7] on minimum temperatures were recorded at 104ºC and -
large lead-free array packages similar to ours already 6ºC. Each cycle is 42 minutes long.
have been published and provide comparison points. Temperature
The bend test enables a qualitative comparison of the (Degree Celsius)

mechanical resistance of the lead-free and tin-lead 104

BGA packages. It was selected over other mechanical
tests because some experience was already gathered in
the previous NEMI lead-free study.
100 test boards were assembled for the reliability
experiments. Three parameters were varied in these -6
test vehicles:
- Solder paste alloy (Sn-Ag-Cu and Sn-Pb). 42 Time
(Minutes)
- Thickness of the PCB: 2.3 mm or 3.4 mm.
Figure 6 - ATC thermal profile for the test
- PCB surface finishes: electrolytic Ni-Au or
chamber carrying the “as-assembled” boards
immersion Ag.
The 56 test boards are divided in 10 cells. The Table
50 boards were sent thought the rework process. A
5 shows the various cells parameters.
certain number of boards were cross-sectioned to
assess the microstructure of the joints and the
Table 5 – Design of the ATC experiment
remainder was sorted between the ATC and the bend
Cell Paste Thickness Rework Surface # of
test experiments. The Table 3 shows the dispositions (mm) finish boards
of the boards between the various cells. Sn-Pb 3.4 No Ni-Au 4
1
2 Sn-Pb 3.4 Yes Ni-Au 4
The test board is carrying a number of different Sn-Pb 2.3 No Ni-Au 4
3
components; for this study the team elected to focus Sn-Pb 2.3 Yes Ni-Au 4
4
on the components listed in Table 4. SAC 3.4 No Ni-Au 8
5
The main goal is to cover a broad variety of solder SAC 3.4 Yes Ni-Au 8
6
joints (balls, leads, through-hole pins). Another goal SAC 2.3 No Ni-Au 8
7
is to include large array packages as they are often SAC 2.3 Yes Ni-Au 8
8
found on this kind of board and are challenging to SAC 2.3 No Imm-Ag 4
9
assemble and to rework. SAC 2.3 Yes Imm-Ag 4
10
Total 56
Table 3 – disposition of the 100 test boards
As Reworked Total Two Thermotron thermal chambers with 1 cubic
assembled meter capacity and equipped with HP data acquisition
Micrographic 10 10 20 systems were used for the ATC experiment. The first
study chamber is for the “as assembled” condition and the
ATC 28 28 56 second one for the “after rework” condition. Pictures
Bend test 12 12 24 of a chamber can be seen in Figure 7. At the time of
Total 50 50 100 the writing of this paper, the tests are on-going and
will be stopped after 6000 cycles. As of early May
2004, the “as assembled” boards have been cycled
4500 times and the “after rework” ones have been
cycled 2000 times.
on the results. For example, for the CBGA
component (as assembled condition) N2 is on average
110% the value of N1 if assembled with Sn-Pb
solder paste but 130% if assembled with lead-free
solder paste. So if N2 is selected, the relative
performance of the CBGA assembled with lead-free
paste will appear to be better than if N1 is selected.
More investigations will be carried to determine if
this effect can be generalized to other components.

Electrical resistance

First open

Slope
Change

N1 N2
Number of cycles
Figure 8 – evolution of the electrical resistance
versus the number of cycles. Depending on the
criteria chosen (“slope change” or” first open”),
Figure 7 – ATC experimental setting. Top view: the the number of cycles to failure will vary.
two thermal chamber used for the experiment.
Bottom view: inside one of the chambers. A total of Bend Test
952 (2 x 476) components were individually The aim of the bend test is to compare the
monitored. mechanical resistance of the solder joints for the
CBGA and the PBGA components. We want to
The component types monitored are the CBGA 937, compare the components assembled using the lead-
the PBGA 544, the micro BGA 256, the TSOP 48 free paste against the one assembled with Sn-Pb and
and the DIP 16. In total, the electrical resistances of the reworked components against the as assembled.
952 components are individually and continuously The design of this experiment is provided in Table 6.
monitored by the data acquisition systems. After the
completion of the 6000 cycles, the boards will be Table 6 – Design of the bend test experiment
pulled out of the chamber and the components will Cell Paste Thickness Rework Surface # of
be cross-sectioned to assess the failure modes. (mm) finish boards
1 Sn-Pb 3.4 No Ni-Au 3
There are different criteria one can use to declare a 2 Sn-Pb 3.4 Yes Ni-Au 3
component as failed. As fatigue cracks propagate 3 Sn-Pb 2.3 No Ni-Au 3
through a solder joint, the electrical resistance of the 4 Sn-Pb 2.3 Yes Ni-Au 3
joint will increase. Eventually the crack will go all 5 SAC 3.4 No Ni-Au 3
the way through and the electrical connection will be 6 SAC 3.4 Yes Ni-Au 3
cut out. 7 SAC 2.3 No Ni-Au 3
A component can be declared “failed” as soon as the 8 SAC 2.3 Yes Ni-Au 3
electrical resistance starts to increase or when the Total 24
open occurs or following another criterion for
example a 50% increase of the electrical resistance. In A schematic of the bend test experiment is shown in
the first case, N1 will be recorded as the number of Figure 9. The PCB is cut around the PBGA and the
cycles to failure (see Figure 8) and N2 will be CBGA to make the test coupon. Surrounding parts
recorded if the “first open” criteria is elected. We around those components will be mechanically
found that this choice can have a significant impact
removed for the bend test machine to have a safe grip [1] “Research update: Lead-Free Solder Alternatives”,
on the coupon. Jasbir Bath , Carol Handwerker , Edwin Bradley,
Circuit Assembly, May 2000, pp 31-40
Total Load
[2] “Are Lead-Free Solder Joints Reliable?”, John E.
Sohn, Circuit Assembly, June 2002, pp32-35
Deflection
[3] “Lead-free rework process for chip scale
packages”, A. Gowda, K. Srihari, A. Primavera,
Advanced Packaging Technologies in the Electronics
Monitoring Industry Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, June
Figure 9 – Schematic of the bend test experiment 2001, pp.99-106

A 4-point bend test was preferred to a 3-point bend [4] “Component Temperature Study On Tin-Lead and
test in order to have a constant curvature radius across Lead-Free Assemblies”, Matthew Kelly, Duilio
the length of the test coupon and a uniform load on Colnago, Vittorio Sirtori, Jasbir Bath, Suan Kee
the tested component. The experiment will be run at Tan, Lai Hook Teo, Curtis Grosskopf, Ken Lykak,
room temperature. As of early May 2004, the bend Charles Ravenelle, Eddie Kobeda, SMTAI 2002
test experiment is on-going.
[5] “Board level reliability of lead free packages”,
Conclusion Swaminath Prasad , Flynn Carson , G.S. Kim , J.S.
An assembly and rework process for medium to high- Lee , Patrick Roubaud , Gregory Henshall , Robert
end lead-free computer products has been developed herber , Ronald Bullwith, SMTAI sept 26-28 2000
by a cross-company NEMI workgroup. Close to 900 Chicago
PCAs have been assembled, including 100
qualification boards, using existing industrial [6] “Thermomechanical Fatigue Behavior of Selected
equipment and procedures. The temperatures ranges Lead-Free Solders”, James Bartelo et al, APEX 2001,
requested by the JEDEC J-STD-02B standard were LF2-1
respected.
The initial lead-free SMT process gave acceptable [7] “Thermo-Mechanical Fatigue Reliability of Lead-
yields but more development needs to be done for the free Ceramic Ball Grid Arrays: Experimental Data
wave solder process. and Lifetime Prediction Modeling.”, Mukta Farooq ,
During the rework development it was found that Lewis Goldman , Gregory Martin , Charles
increasing the bottom side board preheat was helpful Goldsmith , Christian Bergeron, ECTC May 2003
in keeping the temperature gradients under control New Orleans, pp 827-833
during the rework operations. The many challenges
that face lead-free rework include process tool thermal
stability and operational capability. Much learning is
still required to improve the manufacturability and
reduce the cost associated with inspection and yield
loss.
The NEMI workgroup is now conducting a reliability
qualification experiment with the aim to quantify the
impact of the solder type, the rework, the board
thickness and the board surface finish. As of early
May 2004, 952 components are currently tested for
thermal fatigue resistance as part of this
investigation. A study on the mechanical resistance
of large CBGA and PBGA is underway.

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to gratefully thank all the
participants of the NEMI lead-free assembly and
rework project. The authors wish to acknowledge the
management support provided by Agilent, Celestica,
ChipPAC, Cisco, CMAP, Cookson, Dell, Delphi,
EIT, HP, IBM, Intel, Jabil, Lace, Nortel, Sanmina-
SCI, Solectron, Teradyne, T.I. and Vitronics-Soltec.

References