THE ENVIRONMENT

Nothing solders like solder ...or does it?

By Amanda Gronau

The move to lead-free electronics has had a slow start and many detractors, for a variety of reasons that range from the rational - added costs, new process parameters, extensive testing and approval, the need for consensus within the industry, to the irrational - fear of the unknown. The transition will not be easy, but given the market demand for environmentally friendly electronics, it seems inevitable.

CE met Steve Dowds, Indiums Manager for Emerging Technologies, and its champion for the move to lead-free products, to find out

how this and other recent developments in the electronics industry affect a company that has been making solder products for decades.

Some alternatives to lead-bearing solders

Sn Tin forms a good basis as it wets easily and it melts at 232 C. The addition of other elements can lower its melting point, such as silver, which takes melting point down to 221 C. Other elements can reduce this still further. Bi Bi-alloys can present problems of fillet lifting with through-hole components, although it is not clear that this creates problems for joint strength. SnAgBi This wets very well and at 210 C, has the lowest melting temperature of all the alternatives. It cannot, however, be used with lead-bearing components or boards due to issues of Pb-contamination, as Sn, Pb & Bi form a ternary eutectic at 96 C. Once lead-free components have been developed, Indium believes that this could be the best overall alternative. SnAgCu This provides reasonable wetting, excellent tensile strength and fatigue properties and a workable melting point of 217 C. This is Indiums preferred solution while lead-bearing and lead-free components are in use. It is recommended by IPC, NEMI, JEITA in Japan, and the UKs PCIF, for its cost, its long-term reliability and its availability. SnCu This is best suited for wave soldering, as it is cheap. It is not really suitable for paste, due to its high melting temperature (229 C).

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The company
Indium started out in 1934 sellingwellindium, as one of the elements in dental amalgams and bearings. The company also flirted with the use of indium as a silver replacement, but although indium was attractive for its lower costs, and was better in terms of fatigue and tensile strength, it has a higher melting point, so the project was abandoned. Indium claims a solid foundation in technological knowhow; a tradition that, by the 1960s, led to the company offering close to 200 alloys. That same tradition saw Indiums move in the 1970s into solder pastes and with them, into the burgeoning electronics industry, where today, it has sales into over 70 countries. Being a privately owned company, it exercises the prerogative not to reveal its sales figures, market shares or growth, but Indium is undoubtedly one of the leading suppliers to the industry.
Comme tous les fabricants de pte souder pour lindustrie lectronique, Indium travaille actuellement sur des produits sans plomb. Steve Dowds explique les tapes franchies par Indium et ce que reprsente la dernire phase de dveloppement pour son entreprise et pour la filire tout entire. Wie smtliche Lieferanten fr Ltmaterialien arbeitet auch Indium an bleifreien Produkten. Steve Dowds erklrt, wie Indium entstand und was diese neuste Entwicklung fr sein Unternehmen und fr die Industrie bedeutet. Come tutti i fornitori di paste saldanti per lindustria elettronica, Indium sta lavorando sui prodotti senza piombo. Steve Dowds illustra i passi fatti da Indium e cosa rappresenta lultimo sviluppo per la sua azienda e per il settore.

A B S T R A C T

Strategic regions
The majority of Indiums 250 employees are in the USA, where its two manufacturing plants are also to be found. When its overseas fortunes dictated the need for local sourcing that was fast and flexible, Indium opened two blending facilities outside of its domestic market: one in Singapore in 1995 for the Asian market, and the other in the UK in 1999 for the European market. At that time, Indium had just 4 employees in Europe. Today, it has 20, reflecting the fact, says Dowds, that the European solder paste market, at close to 3000 tonnes/year, is of strategic importance for the company. material types to be used for its products, typically from the USA or Europe, the EMS, under extreme cost pressure, is looking for the best price it can get. This means that the EMS company will approach its purchasing in a generic way: This is the chemical family that were using and this is the price were currently getting - you go lower, you get the business. Its not exactly global pricing: We all hear about it but Ive never come across true global pricing: facilities are run by engineers and engineers like to run their own processes, specify their own products and the level of service they get from their suppliers thus facilities within an organisation will differ from each other in terms of what they get from, and pay to, the same supplier. But we all know its a tough old world out there. Even though Indium and its competitors may not be seeing global pricing, the industrys mega firms bring such economies of scale to the negotiating table that prices are being eroded fast. That, for a company that prides itself on its ability to develop new products and for its R&D expertise, is difficult to live with Endless price erosion cant go on if new technologies and products are to be studied, tested, approved. Its important that EMS companies and their suppliers take on board the fact that R&D must be financed by reasonable pricing.
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and markets
Although automotive and medical applications are important, the applications that are most strategic for Indium are those that command the highest volumes: telecoms, mobile and consumer electronics and computers. Its involvement with high volume customers has meant that Indium, like many, has seen significant changes in recent years in its customer base as OEMs have handed their manufacturing activities over to EMS providers. We saw the move across to EMS companies around 3 years ago, says Dowds, explaining that this has its downsides as well as its advantages. While the OEM continues to specify the materials or

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THE ENVIRONMENT
Wetting Wetting defines the degree to which a liquid will homogeneously cover a surface. Wetting speed is all down to surface tension - the lower the surface tension the faster the wetting. Lead has a surface tension of approx 300 dyne/cm, while tins is approx 500 dyne/cm: if lead in the alloy is replaced with tin, it follows that the alloys surface tension is higher, therefore it will wet more slowly. Coalescence Most soldering operations are coalescence reactions rather than wetting or diffusion-type reactions: Once the oxide layer has been removed, the microstructures of SnPb paste with SnPb components and SnPb fit together - or wet - quickly. Similarly, a Sn63 solder and a SnPb component will coalesce together relatively quickly. SnCuAg solder is rather slower as dissimilar metals microstructures dont easily fit together, but it still works okay, given the right flux. Diffusion Now the industry must deal with dissimilar metals, for example SnAgCu, SnAgBi, or SnCu pastes; possibly a Cu board, possibly PdAg components. This means that, instead of coalescing, the metals will undergo a true diffusion reaction, which is slower. Furthermore, the alloys have a higher surface tension than SnPb, slowing wetting.

Eliminating lead
And lately, R&D is very much at the fore of Indiums activities as the electronics industry deals with the need of the market to move away from conventional soldering materials. Tin/lead alloys have been used for ever. Theyre soft, malleable, they work and they ensure high yields. But now Europe faces legislation banning lead, thanks to the EU-sponsored Brite-Euram investigation that found no technical barriers to going lead-free. This investigation, says Dowds, did not consider the following questions: rework; component temperature ratings of 215-225 C; the difficulty of X-ray inspection where new alloys have very similar mass density to the copper layers in the board; and the scarcity of viable alternatives for the In/Pb alloys used in stepsoldering operations with Au substrates. While Japan has not imposed a ban as such, its regulations on recycling will impose significant costs on companies trying to dispose of lead-bearing products, making lead-free an attractive option. The move away from tin/lead alloys is the biggest challenge that the solder industry has faced in decades, but it is one that Dowds welcomes. Whilst he agrees with the principle of removing lead as a precautionary measure to safeguard health, (sometimes its good to remind ourselves why there are moves to get rid of it) Dowds believes that the rea-

sons for going lead-free are less inspired by technical and health issues than by marketing: lead-free products command a better market. Proof of that particular pudding came with Panasonics launch in Japan of a lead-free DVD player in March 1999 - the companys market share leapt from 1% to 15% overnight. This, says Dowds, puts any cost increases from going lead-free into perspective. So where are we in the search for industry-wide leadfree electronics materials and components? With regard to components, it seems, not very far along the road, as many cannot withstand the higher temperatures of lead-free processing. Potting compounds and other materials must therefore be found and qualified that are rated for leadfree temperatures and then the enormous variety of components now available must be re-qualified. Its a daunting task. Despite this, a lot of companies have done a great deal of work to find lead-free solders, either on their own or as part of industry-led or independent working groups. For Indium, although the move threatened much of its core business, it has 220 different alloys to its name including many without lead, such as Ga/In, In/Sn, Sn/Bi, Sn/Ag, Sn/Sb, Sn/Sb/Ag, Au/Sn. So changing to predominantly Pb-free production isnt too difficult for us.

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Alternatives
Although the industrys current favourites wet less and melt at higher melting points than conventional solders and therefore require more processing power, good reliable products are available now that can be dropped into current manufacturing processes. In fact, says Dowds, the new alloys are often stronger than the conventional ones, and present superior fatigue characteristics. The issues, he says, include the fact that the new alloys consist of different metals that do not necessarily match with

Fig. 2 - Print tests - lead-free alternatives should be as clean and compact as the pastes they are replacing, and should give broad operating windows

each other as well as tin and lead do. Thus development work is concerned with finely matching the components of an alloy with each other and developing new inspection standards that will detect defects that could arise in the new alloy that would not necessarily have arisen in conventional solders. New alternatives must also provide a good shelf life

Fig. 1 - Pb contamination when using a BiSN solder with a Sn HASL finish and SnPb component lead. The upper image shows lead dissolved in the joint when the solder is molten, forming a phase of BiPbSn which melts at 96 C. The lower image shows what then happens when thermal cycling from -45 C to +100 C; after only 400 cycles, the joint is already compromised with very low mechanical strength

Fig. 3 - Print quality using Indiums 95.5Sn 3.8Ag 0.7Cu lead-free solder paste on a DEK 265 Infinity printer. Results were excellent, from 30mm/sec to 150mm/sec, even on 0.016 pitch

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THE ENVIRONMENT
Fig. 4 - SnAgCu (bottom) with a conventional flux, and (top) with flux optimised for lead-free processes, printed 70% off the pads to test for coalescence and wetting. Although performance using optimised flux chemistry is superior and the joints are strong, they would fail current test procedures which call for wetting to pad corners as an indication of quality. The move to Pb-free will likely require a change in standards and perception

for its lower process temperature and its excellent wettability. The costs of going lead-free? The alternatives to conventional materials are all more expensive, and they are not yet made in any volume, so it is likely that lead-free solders will initially cost around twice as much as the materials they replace. As electronics manufacture increasingly goes lead-free, economies of scale will start to kick in and this price level should come down.

Information request no. 2706 and wide operating windows, and must print as well - and as fast - as the pastes they are replacing: while in the print head they must remain compact and not fall out, or separate out and ooze; nor should they lose viscosity and slump when processed. They should also leave the print stencils clean.
Indium has made available its expertise in solder products and lead-free issues on its Pbfree website. This is a noncommercial site that aims to answer those questions that electronics professionals might have about moving to leadfree. Found at www.pbfree.com, the site offers technical papers, discussion forums and the opportunity to discuss lead-free issues with industry peers.

Conclusions
The move to lead-free is driven primarily by market factors rather than legislation alone. Although there is currently no single alloy accepted industry wide, it is essential that the industry reaches consensus on what constitutes the ideal lead-free solder paste. At that point, new standards can be drafted so that the alternatives can be tested with procedures that reflect properly on their real functional performance, rather than being tested against the functional and visual performance of conventional tin/lead solders. For the short and medium term, while lead is still to be found in many components, Indium considers SnAgCu to be the best solution, but when components become completely lead-free, SnAgBi may be better

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