Citation
(2008), "A review EIPC summer conference, Dresden, May 29-30, 2008", Soldering & Surface Mount Technology, Vol. 20 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ssmt.2008.21920dac.002
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2008, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
A review EIPC summer conference, Dresden, May 29-30, 2008
Article Type: Exhibitions and conferences From: Soldering & Surface Mount Technology, Volume 20, Issue 4
Day 1 – May 29
Rex Rozario OBE, Chairman of EIPC welcomed the many delegates to the conference held at the Dorint Hotel in Dresden. He painted the economic picture in various places around the world, with fluctuating exchange rates having some unpleasant consequences for companies manufacturing abroad. Success and sustainability is a strong motivator for all involved in the PCB industry, and EIPC intends to play its part in assisting members to achieve both aims.
Walt Custer tends not to produce tablets of stone, nor to descend from high mountains, but he does fly around the world with some visual statistical messages which are always worryingly accurate (depending upon ones standpoint) and are always superbly delivered. Notable comments are as follows: Business conditions 2007 were not bad globally, 4 per cent growth in GDP worldwide, but in 2008 there are concerns on oil, houses, food costs, prices of metals, and lower consumer electronics sales. In GDP growth Europe is bottom of the cycle, but there has been 10 per cent growth in shipment electronic equipment, amongst other almost notable highlights. For better or for worse military spending is continuing. In mobile telecoms Nokia now has a 40 per cent market share, with Motorola losing ground. PC sales always peak just before Christmas, unsurprisingly. There is a notable slowing in SE Asia who rely upon consumer spending on electronics. Photovoltaics are growing like mad, and Germany is one of the largest users. PCBs – $50 billion’s worth of them are made in the world, of which Europe has only a $3.9 million PCB market. Material costs have gone through the roof, and are likely to continue, as an example Dow Chemicals are putting their prices up by 20 per cent! Anything petro-chemical based is going to go through the roof, which with oil at its present level is also unsurprising. So we shall see very little growth in the World PCB model – 2 per cent growth in rigid and flex circuits globally – and right now the prominence is to worries about energy and material costs rising sharply, with consumer electronics well down.
Hans Friedrichkreit runs PCB Network in Switzerland, and has enough personal experience to write the definitive history of the industry. He knows that we now have less choice in Europe, and made a (probably unfair) comparison to Japan, where they are more successful, even against the USA. Why? Because Japanese PCB manufacturers are considered much more as part of the team by OEMs. Why is Japan more successful than the US in PCBs? It is because of excellence in microvia production, where Japan have 37 per cent market share, whereas the USA has only 2 per cent. Japan is also No 1 in flexible circuits, with 28 per cent market share, against the USA’s 7.2 per cent. Japan has concentrated on high-end sophisticated products, and on high technologies which are innovative. Japan remains No.1 in technology, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
Europe has lost further ground, with only 40 per cent of the capacity we had 10 years ago. We now only have 115 (from 250) smaller companies, the midsize companies (€2-10 million) are down 40 per cent, and we have 30 per cent fewer larger companies. So, much less choice for buyers. The top PCB manufacturers in Europe are headed by AT&S Austria, then Aspocomp, Wurth in Germany, Schweizer also, Lares Cozzi in Italy, then it s Elviam, Cicorel, Somacis; ACB and Fuba. Low prices do not come from buyers; they come from competitors with utilisation below capacity. Europe must have a strong industrial base, this is essential. Nowadays the UK has about half the production base of Germany, for various reasons, but the problems with having a supply base too far away is that supplies are at risk. His point about leading the way in technology should not be lost.
Anthony Walker from RTC North West Ltd said that his company is a partner with EIPC on the ProSurf EU FP6 funded project, and he had been invited along to talk about European funding. For Europe to remain competitive it is essential to innovate to have added value, and here a project such as Prosurf supports SME participation in what it is trying to do. The Technology Roadmap has already been released, and one can now look at the website partnering platform, with collaborative proposals on involvement in R&D, and ways in which one can become involved.
FP7 is the latest funding programme, for improving competitiveness, with one single market for R&D. FP7 will run to 2013, and is worth 50billion euros. Partners can obtain funding up to 75 per cent of the project, and exploit the technology to make a profit by collaboration with key players and by raising ones own profile. But the proposal procedure is competitive, and is not for the faint-hearted. Anthony discussed the Key documents; the Call Fiche; the work programme; the guide for applicants; www.cordis.europa.euwhere one can look for finder calls and search for open calls. There are collaborative projects; networks of excellence and coordination and support actions. Research is for the benefit of SMEs, and multimillions are available, to assist in the developing of new knowledge, new technologies, but projects can be competitive. EU projects are also aimed at reducing cost of manufacturing; improving competitiveness. There is much to consider when thinking about joining an EU project – having expertise, the allocation of resource – but RTC North can assist with interested parties.
The sagacious Pete Starkey chaired the next session. Dr Bart Degroote of the European Patent Office came to talk about examining patent applications. He cited The Occam Process for lead-free soldering, which had been developed by Verdant Electronics under the well-known figure of Joe Fjelstad. The Occam Process was described, and it was clear that the advantages of solder-free assembly are potentially huge. But he had to look at the Occam Process from an IP perspective, as an examiner, balancing the novelty of a concept versus the novelty of a claim. He had to look at prior art, and he found only one document, showing integrated assembly package, which was about packaging a package. So, a process practically the same concept as the Occam process was already known in 2003. Another process, Imbera, was also looked at, but again because it was not the same as an unprotected microcircuit it is not classified as a package. Patent file from registering to publication is 18 months, but prior art study takes up much of that time. The Occam Process has yet to emerge with a patent, and Dr Bart helped us see why.
Markus Karbach (Figure 1) is a VP at Fela Leiterplattentechnik, where he heads up the Felam Glasline technology project, and he dropped into the conversation that his company enjoyed a €22.8million turnover last year. Given that the number of PCB manufacturers in Europe had come down from 478 in 2003 to 319 in 2007, they had seen the writing on the wall, and pursued some survival strategies. They spent a time looking for a niche product, and here various rules apply. What they came up with was Glasline, a single-sided board based on glass. This has been their own innovation for 4 years now, it is patented, and is going further, thanks to a wide range of applications, such as switches, keyboards, RFID technology; combined with PIN technology, Felam offer a twin touch and segmented touch to a number of devices used in the medical, therapeutic, and measurement spheres. It allows for a free-hand in design for electronics, and has huge end-use applications and benefits.
Pierre Emmanuel Goutorbe from the Cire Group spoke on the subject of physical integration and EMC control for avionic electronic boards. EMC is a problem for electronic circuitry, and his company has been working on a European project called Euripides (this is emphatically not a Greek tragedy, but has a complex plot, perhaps more Electra than Heracles) and partnering with Airbus, EADS, Siemens VDO, amongst others. They have identified the generic benefits of embedded capacitive layers, which increase circuit density, decrease board weight and size, improve electrical properties, increase product quality, and decrease production costs. These seem to have done the trick.
Giordano M. Di Gregorio (Figure 2) of Somacis spoke about the work they have been doing on an optical interconnections roadmap. They have been working with multimode single mode fibre, embedding the waveguides in PCBs. They have controlled the manufacturing parameters in order to avoid the presence of optical coupling between the buried channels, and thus each channel is selected at 850 nm in order to realise a high confinement factor. Near field acquisitions can be used to evaluate the optical confinement. Giordano emphasised the fact that even the smallest variations in UV intensity during curing, and temperature levels, can induce small changes in the refractive index of the polymer, and thus in the distributed coupling between multimode optical channels. Somacis would do well to join iMAPS, some of whose members are already well down this path.
Keeping it in the family, Giacomo Angeloni of Somacis then chaired the technical session – Surface preparation and final finishes – which was all perfectly applicable to the PCB manufacturing technology interest present in the room. His first speaker was the elegant Nils Ahrendt, of Ormecon in Germany. He spoke on nanotechnology for advanced PCB finishes where an organic nanometal is used as a catalyst (pre-dip) for organic metallisation. This catalyst is a conductive polymer, with a particle size of 10 nm, and can be used for the passivation of Cu, FE, and deposition of Sn on Cu. It can be used as a pre-dip before copper passivation, and/or a replacement for traditional immersion tin. Used at only 0.01 μm pure Sn layer=>0.4-0.6 nm, it has a much lower diffusion rate of Sn into Cu and powerful oxidation prevention of Cu and of the Cu-Sn intermetallic phase. Testing has included an Immersion Tin bath 506 min at 53°C, and shows excellent wettability and 3× reflow shows good solderability. Micro-voids eliminated, shear strength sublime, e-corrosion – none.
Nils concluded that it is the most environmental surface finish on the market to-day.
Mustapha Özkök of Atotech knows about solder joint reliability of nickel-based surface finishes, and shared his experiences with us. Sure, ENIG has been around for awhile, but life goes on and experience builds, and something like Ni/Pd and Ni/Pd/Au comes along to make life easier. Mustapha showed a series of slow-motion video clips on solder ball joint failure testing, and it was evident that nickel-palladium-gold has better ball shear performance. ENIG gave bond failure, whilst palladium is cheaper than both Ni/Pd/Au and ENIG. Atotech are so impressed with Ni/Pd/Au that they now offer it in three different processes according to customer requirements, at about € 4 per square metre extra cost over ENIG but with vastly superior performance.
Jurgen Schmidt of KIV PCB Profichem in Solingen in Germany spoke on copper activation in PCB fabrication using an environmentally friendly process and technology. In a paper based on experiences at his company, he detailed the pre-treatment required prior to lamination of inner layers, where his copper process had offered micro-etching in one step, increasing first pass yield, with a uniform surface structure and a minimum of copper removal. In the pre-treatment prior to bonding, again a one-step process was possible, again there was uniformity of surface, with less processing time, lower processing temperatures, with a replenishment system for continuous processing control. In pre-treatment prior to solder mask, this is now a two-step process only, with no decomposition, and the replenishment system is applicable here. Yield improvement is the name of the game, and KIV proved they are one of the key players.
David Ormerod from Enthone Inc. outlined the challenges for peroxide-sulfuric oxide replacements. Lead-free applications have incited a rapid influx of new and improved dielectric materials, which, despise the increased thermal stress, must remain effectively bonded to the copper inner-layers. Delamination failures have thrown down some challenges for peroxide sulfuric oxide replacements, so Enthone now have improved alternative oxide coatings, the 25 g/L (LCC), and the 50 g/L (HCC) for Inner layer bonding. Both products were described. Through a Taguchi approach an optimised HCC version has been developed to meet 10+ reflow requirements as well as higher chemical resistance and improved bonding over cu 2+, together with the lowest cost of ownership.
John Macguire comes from the EIPC home town of Maastricht (discerning man) and is with March Plasma Systems. John talked about High Uniformity Plasma processing. Plasma has many applications and has been around for some 20 years or so. Plasma is now beginning to replace wet processing as drilled hole diameters decrease, and where higher uniformity is required. Smaller electronic devices with more functions, and circuit boards with HDI are the drivers which lead to the need for better plasma performance, both in etch and uniformity. March tirelessly experimented with various options involving electrode configurations and gas distribution systems, as well as temperature control, and found that changes in all of them improved the uniformity and etch. Effort = achievement.
David Wayness from Rohm & Haas in the UK told the delegates about the development and application of a universal electroless copper process. David looked at the various evolutions that had led to the increasing demand for reliability, and the demands for a “universal” electroless house. Why the need for a new process? The SAP (semi additive process) was illustrated, and the key areas of high adhesion, good plating coverage, high insulation reliability and bond reliability were demonstrated.
The product is Circuposit 3000-1, and allows for faster start-up, improved bath stability, less copper plate out, improved thermal shock and solder shock performance, in a process that can be high build, low build, and be applied in a vertical or horizontal plane. Universal indeed. Circuversatile 3000-1, maybe?
An acclaimed expert on laminates, Volker Klafki of Technolam GmbH came along to talk about the second generation of halogen free CCL. Halogen free is still not for free. Brominated flame retardants is one of those subjects that should be banned at dinner parties, like education, sex and religion. More grief is being caused by the difference between an industry which knows what it is doing, the IPC and the IEC who quite agree with each other, and a European Commission which does not. It was the Japanese, bless them, who set the pace for halogen-free laminates and they are used quite happily in the automotive industry. It’s the environmentalists who are not happy about dubious substances, but there’s a lot of people inhaling dubious substances which HMG wants to downgrade to Class C. Back to our chums in the industry, well, they are accelerating the demand for halogen-free laminates and demand is 45 per cent up from 2006 to 2007, and growing fast. Halogen-free laminates have better CAF resistance than brominated laminates, and are the emerging total solution towards the final green requirement.
Taconic sent along Albert Angstenberger to talk about solutions for power amplifier applications. Words like screwing, sweat, strength and heavy abounded, and one worried about handling all this base material without injury. It was a relief to discover that Taconic know precisely what they are doing and have specialised in supplying just the heavy metal-backed materials needed for power amplifier applications in China and the military for long-term reliability. Such materials have to be RoHS compliant, low-loss, meet UL94VO, have good thermal dissipation, copper-foil peel strength, be easy to use in manufacture, and withstand multiple lead-free soldering. Taconics do.
Veronique Steukers (Figure 3), of Albermarle, beamed at the delegates from the rostrum. The smile may have been warm, but Veronique was in fact quite cross. Veronique is the Chair of EBFRIP, the European Brominated Flame Retardant Industry Panel. TBBPA (tetrabromobisphenol-A) is the largest volume brominated flame retardant in production world wide to-day. She regaled us with a harrowing tale, too close to home for comfort, on the need for flame retardants. TBBPA has been human health and the environment approved by the EU for some time, and the EU Commission has said that TBBPA should not be restricted in any way. Suddenly, now that REACh (a EU Directive) is coming along, a completely different process is being used to look into TBBPA, and Veronique is cross. So vexed that she wants all the delegates to send a letter to the EU on the incoherent campus policy on TBBPA. TBBPA does not need authorisation under the REACh directive, and the industry initiative VECAP can testify to this.
Jérôme De Boysère from Clariant brought us up to date on halogen-free activities. Sadly, he is leaving Clariant, so we hung on his every last word. Yes, we know that Adrian Beard is taking over but he does not have so many distinguished accents in his name. JDB told us that the transition to halogen-free electronics is gaining momentum, with the Asian countries being the front-runners and using such materials in mass production. Bizarre how the Asians know a good thing when they see it and run with it, like lead-free, whilst in Europe it becomes a political issue with quangos and talking shops opening up almost monthly to little or no benefit to industry. Now Greenpeace, strangely for a sea-going organisation, has got out of its knowledge depth and is challenging Deca-BDE. Hey ho. The EU has started consultations on the revision of the RoHS Directive, employing the German Öko-Institut, where 43 BFRs and TBBP-A might be candidates for restriction, and a final study should be presented to the EU Commission in June this year. This month, in fact so one wonders how they are getting on. EIPC has put in its comments, and pertinent they are, too. Every day in Europe there are 12 fire victims and 120 people severely injured in their homes – every day – and flame retardants are a critical part of fire safety solutions/fire prevention. The industry knows that.
A very busy first day, with no less than 17 presentations covering a wide range of topics, all of them in their own way relevant to the business of manufacturing PCBs. Before proceedings ended there was a very pleasant interlude when Rex Rozario presented a framed oil painting by the famous Cologne-based Helmut Tollmann artist to Didier Mauve (Figure 4) of Circuit Foil to mark the occasion of their 40th year of membership of the EIPC. Now that is some achievement.
Day 2 – May 30
Summer Conference, eh? Guests were taking breakfast on the terrace at The Dorint Hotel, so it must have been warm enough. Networking is one of the features of an EIPC Conference, and some serious networking had been undertaken by the delegates after dinner on board a floating restaurant on the Elbe, with the result that, exhausted by lengthy conversations about the precise date of the invention of the first circuit board, or about possible winners of Euro 2008, delegates had slumbered on well past the time when it was the turn of Martyn Gaudion of Polar Instruments to tell them all about root impulse energy (RIE), which they were conspicuously lacking. Martyn is a man who knows of what he speaks, and essentially he was speaking about the requirement for a practical and robust “Go-NoGo” test technique to be deployed on the OCB shop floor. Here RIE, developed in conjunction with Intel, is a measurement system for testing lossy high-sped transmission lines, which produces repeatable measurements to known standards for use in medium and high volume manufacturing conditions. The use of a strip-line coupon, either 8″ or 12″ in length yields better material differentiation than a microstrip, and provides a discerning report in material loss properties.
Dr Agnés Chaillot from EADS shared with us her experiences with HDI boards in an avionic environment. Her department had carried out a number of experimental tests on HDI boards as a result of new laminates being developed which are compatible with lead-free soldering processes. Concerns were addressed about reliability of these laminates being able to withstand thermo-mechanical strains induced by high temperatures during manufacture and by the environmental conditions experience in operation during the expected lifetime of avionic equipment. Using finite element modelling (FEM) methods they were able to obtain a better understanding of the ageing behaviour of HDI boards including microvias, buried vias, and plated-through holes.
Tom Bresnan of R&D circuits in Plainfield, New Jersey, told us about his company’s work on producing a test platform for 0.4 mm package testing. The worldwide semiconductor package volume increases year on year, and with 0-4 mm packages now, and 0.2 mm packages due by 2011, reliable test methodology is critical.
R&D circuits have produced as 17″×23″ oversized panel, 0.187-0.250 thick, very high aspect ratio plating 33-45:1 (here DRPP is essential) with robust copper thickness, which allows high-speed measurements to be undertaken.
Dr Rita Chiodini, UL International, Italy works in UL Conformity Assessment, and UL796 standard was the subject of her presentation. This standard establishes construction and performance requirements for rigid and flexible circuits where they are used as components in devices or appliances. The test programme includes thermal shock, flammability, bond strength, Delamination and blistering, plating adhesion and also conductive past adhesion, thermal cycling on dissimilar materials, silver migration and dielectric crossovers on HDI boards. It is there fore thorough. Dr Chiodini gave us a detailed look at the testing done with hole plugging as well.
Maria Nikolova is a Senior Research Fellow at MacDermid and chatted about the use of electroplated copper to fill microvias. Copper filled microvias enable the use of stacked via designs, which leads to higher circuit densities and better thermal management. How to do this? She described the VF100 process, which simultaneously fills vias and plates through holes in a single bath, using direct current and current modulation, with a 100 per cent via fill ratio and absolutely no cracking. This looked impressive, and the attributes were many; unsurprisingly customer test results had all been excellent.
Lars-Eric Pribyl of Atotech was our final speaker, and he had found the solution. It was called Solution E, and was the panacea for all ills connected with electroless copper. This was just as well as there were new influences on reliability of interconnection of inner layers, the driving forces being RoHS and WEEE, as well as new requirements for physical and electrical behaviour of PCBs. These include the trends in the automotive industry where functionality is increasing, and where electrical mechanical systems are replacing hydraulic mechanical systems, so that the reliability of car depends upon the reliability of its electrical components.
Automotive OEMs are rewriting their reliability requirements, and one major issue are ICDs. (interconnection defects). The entire PTH process has many parameters which can affect the inner layer interconnection, one of which is electroless copper.
This has four components – copper solution; basic solution; reduction solution; stabiliser solution. It is the latter that has the major influence on the ICD performance. The tests that Atotech did with six different stabiliser solutions with a solder shock test showed that Solution E gave the best ICD performance, repeated under more stressful conditions (326°C) 6 × 10 s floating; 100 cycles Hot Oil tests also showed Solution E as superior. 2,816 connections were tested, with zero ICDs. Their new stabiliser solution shows greater superiority to current production solutions, and is now an integral part of their Plus Process.
This was a very well-attended conference, quite up to the usual EIPC standards, but with a greater number of papers, 17 alone in Day 1, which requires a lot of concentration and some skilful time-keeping. Dresden was a good choice of venue, the evening guided tour on foot was quite amazing, and to see what has been done to the city since reunification (and how little before) was an education. Learning from history should always be part of any education.
John LingAssociate Editor