Evaluation of reliability and production parameters used in new materials and processing applications for surface mount technology

It is pointed out that testing surface-mounted (SM) components for qualification implies a number of carefully selected precautions in order to be able to draw the right conclusions. The reliability of SM components depends on a whole series of parameters, substrate material and soldering process being only the most important ones. Therefore, the qualification procedure for SM devices must be designed to incorporate those aspects. The authors describe such a procedure and deal with the associated problems. The results of qualification tests on a variety of SM components are discussed. The experiments show that integrated circuits in SO and PLCC packages are capable of withstanding the conditions of the SM processes. On the other hand, ceramic capacitors, being very susceptible to cracks, need many precautions to guarantee good reliability.<>