The impact of lead-free soldering on electronics packages

This paper will review the challenges brought by lead-free soldering and some preliminary experimental evaluation results will be discussed. The initial results show that the lead-free soldering process with 260 C reflow peak temperature does not directly cause failures for bismaleimide-triazine (BT)-based fine pitch ball grid array (FPBGA) packages. However, the strict lead-free soldering condition could degrade the integrity of weak interface joints and potentially damage the package in subsequent unbiased highly accelerated stress test (unbiased HAST) evaluation. The impacts of lead free soldering with high reflow temperature on concurrent available electronics components could be more severe than previously believed. In the future, new materials and design concepts should be applied to enhance the package reliability under strict lead-free soldering conditions.