A Thermally Enhanced Halogen Free Laminate Material to Reduce the Impact of Lead Free Process

Halogen free material has been developed for years and recently, it catch the focus again. Besides the regulation in each country, the pressure from Green Peace is huge since they will release quarterly the ranking. Green Peace released a film showing the process of disassembling consumer product, in which they found too many component with halogen inside. This film hurt the company´s image in environmental issue and they are now trying to get rid of this bad image by calling their suppliers to offer halogen free components. For this reason, major OEM set up the schedule and ask the suppliers to follow. Including Apple, Dell, HP, Intel and AMD all announced they will start to halogen free material. The action brought directly the impact on the suppliers, as well as to the industry. In the past, there is no global halogen free regulation for the industry to follow so most of the members take IPC definition released in 2000 as major reference. According to this definition, any halogen not purposely implemented in the assembly is regarded as halogen free. Now in Norway PoHS rules, it clearly defines 18 elements to be excluded. First one is Bromine type, including HBCDD and the most commonly used TBBPA. So far the most popular flame retardant to replace Bromine type is phosphorous type or its compound but it needs further analysis to make sure the processability and reliability before mass production. Since halogen result in several disease, like psychosis - cancer, so many international regulation released to the industry. So far we know, there are IEC61249-2-21 JPCA-ES01 IPC 4101. Based on the timetable the major OEM implement halogen free material, there will be some critical issues to face. For example, does the new material could replace the old one in terms of function? Any manufacturing process parameters to change? How much the cost will increase? How to test the new material?