SAC Alloys Implementation in Electronic Products Manufacturing

The paper intents to present the applied research performed by a few Romanian technological teams for an optimum implementation of SAC alloys in electronics industry, based on RoHS Directive, in order to investigate the behavior of SAC solder alloys in electronic products. Because manufacturers will need to ensure that their products comply with the requirements of European Regulations by July 2006 and designers are forced to change their strategy to accommodate lead-free soldering and not only, the paper shall emphasize the work on understanding and implementing SAC alloys, trying to underline advantages and disadvantages during the manufacturing flow. These new materials must be correctly modeled for their electrical characteristics when designers are involved in signal integrity analysis issues. Special component placement rules and new configurations of various structures/masks have to be designed for a good compliance between PCB layout design and manufacturing process. The main goal of the paper is to find and promote new methods for reducing to zero all unknown factors which can affect the assembling and manufacturing process of electronic products.