Circuits Assembly Online Magazine - Current

Press Releases

Magnus Marthinsson has been appointed interim Sr VP Global Technologies, effective April 1. Magnus’ current role is as head of global aftermarket sales in the Pattern Generators division. Magnus Marthinsson has a MSc in electrical engineering and has worked at Mycronic since 2004. Prior to that he held various management roles in the development organizations of Zarlink, Ericsson and Allgon.

“Michael Chalsen is retiring and I am happy that Magnus has accepted to lead division Global Technologies until a permanent successor has been appointed”, says Anders Lindqvist, Mycronic’s President and CEO.

PCB East, the electronics industry trade show for the East Coast! Coming May 9-12, 2023

Indium Corporation’s Senior Global Product Manager for Semiconductor and Advanced Materials Sze Pei Lim is set to deliver a presentation at ICEP 2023 in Kumamoto, Japan, on April 19. The presentation will cover the findings from a technical paper, co-authored by R&D Manager for the Alloy Group HongWen Zhang, titled An In-Containing Lower-Temperature Lead-Free Solder Paste for Wafer-Level Package Application that Outperforms SAC305.

In recent years, more interest has been shown in adopting low-temperature solders/materials in various applications in order to decrease the dynamic warpage of highly-integrated packages; reduce energy consumption during assembly; and mitigate risk for temperature-sensitive sensors. Durafuse® LT, an In-containing solder paste, was developed and used in mobile phone assembly with a 200°C peak reflow temperature profile. Now an increased interest exists for low-temperature processing for first-level interconnects. Therefore, more research is needed to identify any reliability implications for SnAgCu-based bumps creating an interconnect using Durafuse® LT solder paste material.

As Senior Global Product Manager for Semiconductor and Advanced Materials, Lim works closely with R&D and manufacturing, and engages with the world’s leading semiconductor companies and contract manufacturers. She is a task force member of the International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative’s (iNEMI) Packaging Technology Integration Group and has co-chaired a number of industry projects and road mapping initiatives over the past five years. She is also on the executive committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Packaging Society Malaysia Chapter. Lim is a part of the organizing committee for the International Electronics Manufacturing Technology (IEMT). She has authored a number of technical papers and presented regularly in various international technical conferences. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the National University of Singapore, where she majored in industrial chemistry with a focus in polymers. She is a Certified SMT Process Engineer and has earned her Six Sigma Green Belt designation

About Indium Corporation

Indium Corporation is a premier materials refiner, smelter, manufacturer, and supplier to the global electronics, semiconductor, thin-film, and thermal management markets. Products include solders and fluxes; brazes; thermal interface materials; sputtering targets; indium, gallium, germanium, and tin metals and inorganic compounds; and NanoFoil®. Founded in 1934, the company has global technical support and factories located in China, Germany, India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.

For more information about Indium Corporation, visit www.indium.com or email jhuang@indium.com. You can also follow our experts, From One Engineer To Another® (#FOETA), at www.linkedin.com/company/indium-corporation/ or @IndiumCorp.

About ICEP 2023

ICEP is the largest international conference on electronic packaging in Japan, attracting more than 360 attendees and hosting about 35 technical sessions. ICEP provides a strong platform to demonstrate your technologies and products as well as expand your customer network. It is jointly sponsored by JIEP, IEEE EPS Japan Chapter, and iMAPS. The conference has technical sessions covering a wide range of topics, including advanced packaging, design, modeling and reliability, emerging technologies, high-speed, wireless and components, interconnections, materials and processes, optoelectronics, power electronics integration, thermal management.

NASHVILLE – KYZEN, the global leader in innovative environmentally friendly cleaning chemistries, will exhibit at the SMTA Boise Expo & Tech Forum, scheduled to take place Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at The Grove Hotel in Boise, Idaho. Visit KYZEN for answers regarding electronics cleaning challenges. Cleaning experts will be in the booth to provide a total cleaning solution.

KYZEN will be highlighting their award-winning combination of chemistry and process control. For more than 30 years, KYZEN's focus has been to look at the complete process and work with them to improve that process. Their aim is to ultimately increase yields, advance reliability and help to realize cost savings along the way. KYZEN’s newest aqueous cleaning chemistry, AQUANOX A4626, paired with the KYZEN PCS accomplishes that goal.

AQUANOX A4626 is easy-to-use and control, environmentally friendly, and has a long tank life that makes it safe for multi-pass applications. Using A4626 with the KYZEN Process Control System (PCS) to monitor and automatically react to the dynamic changes in the wash bath concentration completes the process. A4626 paired with the PCS is the perfect combination – Chemistry and Control are hard at work.

To keep up with all the latest news regarding KYZEN at the SMTA Boise Expo and more, visit https://www.kyzen.com/about-kyzen/events/

MULINO, OR – Sunstone Circuits, a leading provider of high-quality printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing services, is pleased to announce that it is strengthening its partnership with Screaming Circuits, a premier provider of quick-turn prototype and short-run production electronic assembly services.

The partnership between Sunstone Circuits and Screaming Circuits began several years ago, and both companies have been working together to provide their customers with a complete solution for PCB fabrication and assembly. The collaboration has been successful, and the two companies are focused on deepening their partnership to provide even better services to their customers. The partnership refresh will zero in on more efficient and concise communication, unified team building and training, and a streamlined quote turnaround. Under the strengthened partnership, Sunstone Circuits will continue to focus on PCB manufacturing, while Screaming Circuits will focus on electronic assembly services. This will allow both companies to leverage their core strengths, and provide customers with high-quality, efficient, and cost-effective services.

"We are thrilled to strengthen our partnership with Screaming Circuits," said Matt Stevenson, VP of Sales and Operations at Sunstone Circuits. "We believe that this partnership allows us to provide our customers with an even better solution for their PCB fabrication and assembly needs. Our collaboration with Screaming Circuits has already produced great results, and we look forward to continuing to work together to serve our customers."

"We are excited to continue our partnership with Sunstone Circuits," said Kellie Schwab, VP of Ecommerce at Screaming Circuits. "By furthering our partnership focus, we can provide our customers with faster turnaround times, more competitive pricing, and continued high quality service. Our partnership with Sunstone Circuits is a win-win for both companies and our customers."

GREAT NECK, NY – Thermaltronics USA, Inc., a manufacturer of award-winning solder robots, today announced that the Ormond, FL office and demonstration facility is now fully operational and can provide customers with complete “sample board” processing and programming for robotic soldering applications.

Ed Zamborsky, the Technical Support Manager, was confident that the evaluation and reporting process would give customers a clear understanding of the unique features and benefits of the Thermaltronics award-winning systems. Zamborsky commented, “While there were several competitive systems available on the market, yield rates could not compare to those achieved by Thermaltronics’ solder robots. The use of high- precision hardware and intelligent software ensures precision soldering and low operator training costs.”

All of Thermaltronics’ demonstration facilities allow potential customers to see the benefits of the Thermaltronics soldering robots, which include dynamic laser height control, vision, mapping, and advanced software controls.

In addition to its award-winning hand soldering product line, Thermaltronics also provides an extended range of accessories to support both production and rework applications. For more information about the range of Thermaltronics solder robots or to request a visit by one of the company’s technical support staff, e-mail info@thermaltronics.com or visit www.thermaltronics.com

CAMBRIDGE, UK – Asked whether electronics is a 'digital technology', almost everyone would reply in the affirmative. However, while printed circuit boards (PCBs) enable digital technologies, the manufacturing processes used to produce them are still largely analog.

'Digital manufacturing' refers to any method that is directly controlled by a computer - simply using software in the design process doesn't count. Well-known examples are CNC (computer numerical control) machining, a subtractive method in which a rotational cutting tool selectively removes material, and 3D printing, an additive method that involves selective deposition of metal, plastic, or even ceramic. In both cases, direct computer control means that every part produced can have a different design and even that the design can be adjusted once manufacturing is in progress.

In contrast, conventional PCB manufacturing takes an analog approach. The desired pattern is transferred to a mask that is used for photolithography. Regions of material, typically copper laminate on a PCB, that are not coated with the patterned resist are then removed with an etchant. While this approach enables efficient high-yield production, introducing digital manufacturing methods would bring additional benefits.

Why Do We Need Digital Electronics Manufacturing?

Arguably, the main benefit of digital over analog manufacturing is that every item can be different with no additional setup time or costs. This is why inkjet printers (digital) are used at home since only a single copy is typically needed, whereas offset printing (analog) is used for mass-produced newspapers. With electronics, digital manufacturing enables rapid prototyping, accelerating the design process. It facilitates mass customization, where every circuit has a different design if desired without dramatically increasing production costs. Furthermore, high-resolution digital manufacturing methods can be used in conjunction with conventional photolithography to repair any unwanted circuit breaks.

Digital Manufacturing Methods for Electronics

Interest in digital manufacturing methods for electronics has increased rapidly over recent years. While inkjet printing is by far the best-established method of digitally depositing conductive ink, there are a variety of emerging techniques that are both digital and additive. They all offer the direct control of digital manufacturing while spanning a range of throughputs, resolutions, material viscosity, and substrate dimensionality.

Print-then-plate utilizes inkjet printing of a thin layer of silver nanoparticle conductive ink to selectively pattern the substrate. This 'seed layer' is then fully metalized by electroless plating, producing a copper circuit. This method is already used for mass production. It combines the customizability of digital manufacturing, the reduced waste of additive manufacturing, and the conductivity of copper metal (rather than printed conductive ink).

Laser induced forward transfer (LIFT) can be regarded as a hybrid of laser direct structuring (LDS) and inkjet printing. Briefly, a laser heats conductive ink coated underneath a 'transfer plate', with evaporating solvent ejecting the ink. The lack of nozzle is a major benefit since it enables viscous inks typically used for screen printing to be used. There is potential for LIFT to be used in tandem with R2R production, enabling rapid, cost-effective production of customized circuits.

Aerosol printing is a relatively established technique that is well suited to printing onto 3D surfaces. A low-viscosity ink is atomized and formed into a thin collimated jet within a gas sheath layer, enabling resolutions as fine as 10 um with a working distance of up to 5cm. It's already being used in the semiconductor packaging production process and will soon be applied to larger area conformal surfaces such as automotive glass.

Electrohydrodynamic printing (EHD) uses an electric field to 'pull' ink from a nozzle rather than relying on pressure to 'push' out the ink. Capable of traces as narrow as 1um, this technique is currently being used to repair defects in TFT backplanes. An emerging approach is to combine hundreds of individually addressable nozzles within a single MEMS (micro electromechanical system) chip promises to break the resolution/throughput trade-off for small-scale additive electronics manufacturing.

Impulse printing is an innovative technique in the early stages of development that promises high throughput printing onto 3D surfaces, such as the edges of glass backplanes or 2.5D semiconductor packaging. The approach utilizes a rapid heat pulse from a controllable array of heating elements to expel ink from a flat 'transfer surface' onto the target object. Since no nozzle is used, ink can simultaneously be expelled from across the heated 'transfer surface'.

Comprehensive Overview

The digital electronics manufacturing methods outlined are predicted to gain further traction, driven by a desire for greater customizability, shorter product development cycles, and demand for 2.5D/3D electronics. IDTechEx's report, "Manufacturing Printed Electronics 2023-2033", builds on 20 years of covering printed and flexible electronics to explore these technologies and many others, including roll-to-roll manufacturing. Drawing on information from conference attendance and primary interviews, it outlines the players, capabilities, trends, and requirements across the printed electronics manufacturing space, helping to support choices in product development and when scaling up to mass production.

To find out more, including downloadable sample pages, please visit www.IDTechEx.com/ManufacturingPE.