After having served as a columnist for SMT Magazine for 20 years, for this first article under the I-Connect007 family of publications I have chosen a theme topic that is as “durable” as SMT in observance of the exciting expansion of the SMT Magazine into the I-Connect007 family.
Surface mount has been a critical manufacturing technology for the electronics PCB assembly for three decades (plus or minus a couple years) and is expected to continually play an important role in the years to come. In parallel, solder paste will continue to be the most viable interconnecting material for circuit board level mass production. As an electronic material, solder paste is “old,” as well as “new.” It is old because solder paste has been around for decades to serve the interconnecting function in electronic circuits and outside the electronics arena. Yet, it is new since its chemistry and the specific formulae have always been advancing. A comprehensive treatment of this subject culminated in the very first textbook on the subject that I authored back in 1988.
As the electronics industry moves into a new decade, with respect to solder paste, what are the changes, what will be the changes and what will not change from the manufacturing perspective? First, let’s look at the state of the electronics industry.
The continued increase in electronics content in products spanning a wide range of industries has made the electronics industry, per se, the largest employer, and the electronics market value over the trillion-dollar mark at the turn of the century. The industry’s growth, driven by semiconductors, is expected to continue. In brevity, the trends in the downstream industry sectors in package level, main board level and module level in the electronics hierarchy, as shown in the schematic below, will follow suit.
