Book Review - Electronic Packaging and Interconnection Handbook

Lead-Free Solder Interconnection Reliability Edited by Dongkai Shangguan Published By ASM International 12 Chapters, 290 pages including diagrams and illustrations Review by Bob Willis

I have been looking forward to reviewing this book since Dongkai first mentioned its creation during an evening meal 12 months ago. As a manufacturing engineer not a reliability guy I have to ask, am the right person to review this title? Well, if I don't cover each chapter in detail it provides the opportunity for others to review the technical depth in greater detail.

Many of the reliability issues are out of my area of expertise but it has certainly been valuable to read through these chapters and increase my knowledge. I have to say that the first chapter is worth the cost of the book as Dongkai provides an excellent overview. Outlining the lead-free issues and what many engineers are bound to face during the introduction of this new technology, he comments on the well known and more obscure issues already faced by many companies early in lead-free production. Reading between the lines Dongkai make the reader aware of his own concerns.

I have only met Reza Ghaffarian on one occasion and he came across as being a very practical engineer. He has written a chapter which deals with failure analysis and provides a very useful reference for now and the future as more engineers introduce lead-free. He comments on some of the issues relating to the high reliability end of the market. Many of these companies are exempt from the legislation but will, in the long term, undoubtedly be affected by these changes.

I guess my one disappointment is that the text book did not cover printed circuit board and component reliability and it should have. It could have been included as a chapter on its own or included in the failure analysis section. Yes the title is "Interconnection" but components and boards fit it to this category.

My good friend Jean-Paul Clech has contributed his reliability knowledge and experience to this work. Over the last few years Jean-Paul has been trying to gather data from many lead-free projects and determine a way of interpreting all of the results. However, as he discussed in many of his workshops it is very difficult to compare all the data that has been produced. In the chapter he provides an overview of the best conclusions to date and the life of different alloy and design combinations.

Each chapter in the book provides a good listing of reference papers which, if collected, would provide a very useful resource. Much like the very valuable compilation of papers put together a couple of years ago by Paul Vianco in his SMTA Lead-Free Bibliography CD-ROM. Paul contributes his own chapter to the book covering creep and fatigue properties of the main lead-free contenders which are really tin/silver/copper and tin/copper.

The final chapter is again penned by Dongkai and summarises the main reliability concerns. These are varied and many not fully understood. The classic is "Tin Whiskers" as we have seen that even if we follow all the industry knowledge and published guidelines whiskers can still occur.

It is clear that some of the chapters are outside of my sphere of knowledge but throughout the book it provided value and an improved understanding of reliability concepts and reliability in general. Dongkai and the assembled team of internationally recognised experts have done a good job. It will be interesting to hear the views of the other reliability gurus.

I hope that Dongkai Shangguan and his engineering team at Flextronics take some time out to produce their own lead-free process guide. I know it would be very popular, illustrate Flextronics’ depth of expertise and provide another reference source for industry thirsty for real process experience. To quote a well used US statement, the Flex engineering team can "Walk the Talk".

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