Articles by Brook Sandy-Smith

Solder mask

Overcoming Assembly Challenges with Bottom Termination Components

This paper was an Outstanding Paper Award finalist at EDI CON USA 2017

Bottom termination components (BTCs) have become one of the most common packages with the highest growth rate. Typical assemblies now have many of these components, often with varying types of BTCs on one assembly. What can be done when one or more BTCs start to show increased variation within the same process? Investigations have been conducted to find materials that offer the lowest voiding in large ground plane solder joints. In addition, process modifications have continually been proposed to help alleviate voiding in BTC components. These include but are not limited to: pad design, pad patterning, stencil design, via positioning, solid solder addition, and reflow profile optimization.


Read More