Dr. Jennie Hwang to Present at IPC APEX 2023

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Dr. Jennie Hwang to address “Solder Joint Reliability” and “Preventing Manufacturing Defects and Product Failure” at IPC APEX on Sunday, January 22 from 12:00PM-3:00PM and Monday, January 23, 2023, from 1:30PM to 4:30PM, respectively.

Under today’s manufacturing and market environment, the effort to maximize production yield, reduce cost, and assure product reliability is becoming increasingly critical to a company’s competitiveness. Considering the new and anticipated developments in packaging and assembly and with the goal of achieving high yield and reliability in mind, the “how-to” prevent prevailing production defects and product failures and to ensure the solder joint reliability through understanding and prevention of potential causes is a necessity.

Dr Hwang leverages decades of extensive real-world experiences and deep and comprehensive knowledge to address “Solder Joint Reliability” (PD16) on Sunday, January 22 from 12:00PM-3:00PM; and “Preventing Manufacturing Defects and Product Failure” (PD35) on Monday, January 23 from 1:30PM to 4:30PM at IPC APEX to be held at the San Diego Conference Center.

Sunday, January 22, 2023 - 12:00PM-3:00PM

PDC16: “Solder Joint Reliability – Principle and Practice”

The reliability of solder joint interconnections in chip level, packaging level and board-level is crucial to the end-use product reliability - when a single one solder joint fails, the product fails. As the number of solder interconnections continues to increase and the volume of each solder interconnection continues to become smaller, the assured solder joint integrity is paramount. 

Emphasizing on practical, working knowledge, yet balanced and substantiated with science, the course provides a holistic view of the important aspects of solder joint reliability including the critical “players” (e.g., manufacturing process, PCB/component coating/surface finish, solder alloys). Fundamentals in fatigue and creep damage mechanisms (via ductile, brittle, ductile-brittle fracture), and the likely solder joint failure modes (e.g., interfacial, near-interfacial, bulk, inter-phase, intra-phase, voids-induced, surface cracks) will be highlighted.

To withstand harsh environments, the strengthening metallurgy to optimize stress vs. strain relationship and to further increase fatigue and creep resistance will be outlined. The power of metallurgy and its ability to anticipate the relative performance will be illustrated by contrasting the comparative performance vs. metallurgical phases and microstructure.

The parameters to be considered to derive a universal prediction model and whether existing life-prediction models can assure reliability will be highlighted.

A relative reliability ranking among commercially available solder systems including newer lead-free alloys (coined “Low Temperature Solder”), doped and other solder alloys, as well as the scientific, engineering and manufacturing reasons behind the ranking will be outlined.

Attendees are encouraged to bring their own selected systems for deliberation.