STI Electronics prides itself on reliability and training the next generation of workers.

With its home just a few miles from a major military and aerospace testing center, STI Electronics has built a reputation for providing electronics that continue to work through the toughest conditions.

Now in its 43^rd year of operation, STI moved to Madison, AL, from California in 1993. The company settled into its current location – just down the road from Redstone Arsenal, a US Army base that houses NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and more than 75 federal agencies – in 2008.

The benefits of capillary flow underfills on solder joint reliability.

In electronics manufacturing, underfill refers to a material that is applied to fill the gap between a semiconductor device, such as flip-chip assemblies, ball grid arrays (BGA), or chip-scale packages (CSP), and the substrate, such as a PCB or flex circuit. It is also important in 3-D ICs and advanced packaging technologies that involve stacking multiple chips or integrating multiple functions into a single package.

Underfill materials are essential in modern electronics manufacturing and are used extensively to enhance the reliability, performance and longevity of electronic assemblies. These materials improve mechanical strength by enhancing the physical bond between the chip and substrate, reducing the risk of solder joint failure due to mechanical stress.

Heat and cold can prematurely degrade incorrectly handled materials.

Solder paste is an elaborate mixture of metal powders, acids, thixotropes, solvents and a variety of other chemicals. When combined, the reactions and interactions can be extremely varied and complex. When designing solder paste chemistry, key considerations include not only its in-process performance but also how to maintain the stability of that performance against the rigors of time, temperature fluctuations and usage.

A noted solutions architect offers an audacious plan for AI acceptance. It just might work.

The talk of AI-based printed circuit design – and the idea that artificial intelligence could theoretically design a board faster and more efficiently than a human – has inevitably led to the fear that designers will be replaced by their algorithmic counterparts.