VPS technology and applications

The electronic equipments become day by day more important part of human society. As consequence the requests for performance are more divers and complex, not only from electronic packaging point of view, but also from environment challenges. The electronic equipments production is realized in majority using surface mounted technology on assembling line. The electronic components assembling process on PCBs becomes a key issue in electronic packaging reliability. The I/O density of the components is continuously increasing while the soldering area is dramatically reducing. In the same time the PCB substrate and the final finish of the PCB have more and more diversity. Under such circumstances the solder joints resulting from the soldering process represent an important outcome for the PCB assembling. Moreover, the Lead-Free soldering requests, imposed by the RoHS Directive, can cause difficulties in obtaining a high quality/reliable soldering process. The vapor phase soldering (VPS) technology could be an efficient alternative because of its high efficient and uniform heating characteristics. A good control of the soldering temperature, the oxygen free soldering atmosphere, and especially, the higher rate of heat transfer, represent the main advantage of the VPS technology. The paper presents some applications of VPS technology related to the PCBs characteristics.