Guest editorial

Citation

Bailey, C. and Liu, J. (2006), "Guest editorial", Soldering & Surface Mount Technology, Vol. 18 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ssmt.2006.21918baa.001

Guest editorial

This issue of Soldering & Surface Mount Technology (SSMT) presents a number of papers from the 7th High Density Microsystems Design, Packaging and Failure Analysis (HDP’05) conference held this year in the dynamic city of Shanghai, China. With over 100 high-quality technical papers and presentations, this yearly conference brings together scholars and industrialists from Asia, Europe and the America to discuss the challenges and latest advances in high density packaging.

In this issue of SSMT six papers from the HDP conference and one extra paper by Chen on modelling BGAs are presented. These discuss the behaviour of key interconnect materials for high density packaging such as lead-free solders, anisotropic conductive adhesives (ACAs) and isotropic conductive adhesives (ICAs).

Lead-Free solder alloy interconnects are the theme of the paper by Sun et al. who presents both modelling and experimental results for the fatigue of Tin-Zinc solders. Parameters are calculated for the Coffin-Manson equation for this material.

High strain rate behaviour of solder joints is the topic of the paper by Tsai et al. This is important in understanding how interconnects on a circuit board will behave during a drop or impact test. New test equipment is presented as is the failure behaviour of a number of solder alloys. Intermetallic materials in solder joint alloys can strongly govern the performance and reliability of the joint. Hsiao and Duh characterise the intermetallic materials formed in solder joints for flip-chip components both after the reflow process and during thermal aging.

ACAs are discussed in the two papers by Yin et al., and Li and Wong. Yin and details a modelling approach to predict the behaviour of ACAs when subjected to a pressure cooker test. Li and Wong show how the use of nano-sized silver particle fillers enhance the electrical properties of the ACA joint.

ICAs are the topic of the paper by Inoue and Suganuma. The cure process for these materials is very important as if not undertaken correctly this can result in subsequent defects. This paper describes the effect of cure conditions on the subsequent electrical properties of ICAs.

The additional paper from Chen and Chen describes a finite element analysis of a BGA component. Fatigue predictions are made to characterise the lifetime of the solder joints when subjected to thermal cycling. The sensitivity of fatigue life to changes in design parameters (such as die thickness, etc.) is also provided through the use of optimisation technology.

Enjoy this issue of SSMT and for those who can attend the next HDP conference this summer we look forward to meeting you in Shanghai.

Chris BaileyUniversity of Greenwich, UK

Johan LiuChalmers University of Technology, Sweden