MINNEAPOLIS, Dec. 23 -- SMTA International 2004 today announced the recipients of its top awards.

Chrys Shea of Cookson Electronics won for Best of Conference, Alan Donaldson, Intel Corp., won Best of Proceedings, and Lars Boettcher, Fraunhofer IZM Berlin, won Best International Paper.

The awards are chosed by attendees and recipients win $1,000.

Shea was awarded Best of Conference Paper for "Optimizing Stencil Design for Lead-free SMT Processing." The paper identifies optimized stencil aperture geometries and explores the lower spread of lead-free alloys on some alternate surface finishes. 

Donaldson's paper, "Hot Air Lead-free Rework of BGA Packages and Sockets," presents rework profiles and a process developed based on actual package reliability tests.

Boettcher's paper, "Development of 3D-Redistribution and Balling Technologies for Fabrication of Vertical Power Devices," which reveeals the development of a 3-D wafer-level redistribution process based on fully additive metal deposition.

The SMTA is seeking papers for its 2005 conference in September. Abstracts will be accepted through Feb. 7 at www.smta.org/smtai/call_for_papers.cfm.