Analysis of Pin in Paste Soldering on Printed Circuits Boards Assembly Using Lead Free Solder Paste R. B. Lima1, V. F.

Cardosoa and A. N. R. da Silvaa,b Department of Engineering of Electronic Systems, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, SP, 05508-010, Brazil b Materials, Process, and Electronic Components Course, College of Technology of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, SP, 01124-000, Brazil The THC (Through Hole Components) assembly in a SMT board using Pin-in-Paste (PIP) process was studied and implemented using SAC lead-free solder paste. The main idea of this process is to solder in the same thermal step THCs and SMDs (Surface Mount Devices), eliminating the step of wave soldering which is the most used in electronics assembly today for THCs. As results one could achieve reduction on production time and costs, as well as improvements in soldering quality and also environmental aspects. The experiment was conducted to identify the best PCB and stencil design parameters. Printing and reflow parameters were also considered to reach the best solder joints. Some problems could be found with solder excess but the solder quality of the reflowed boards was acceptable for almost all components. Introduction The complete migration to SMT (Surface Mount Technology) in electronics assembly cannot be done nowadays mainly because of SMDs reduced electrical power capacity and lower mechanical strength, comparing to THT (Through Hole Technology). So in some cases its necessary to use mixes technology boards (SMT and THT together), which makes it necessary two thermal processes, one for SMT soldering (reflow) and another for THT (wave soldering). The possibility to solder both types of components in the same step will result first of all in time and costs saving. This is reinforced by the new regulations about prohibited solder materials (mainly lead), which makes it harder to reflow solder pastes using Lead-Free technology1. The Pin in Paste (PIP) is a process that uses reflow technology to solder THCs (Though Hole Components), soldering it with the SMDs (Surface Mount Devices)2,3,4,5. It should be printed solder paste on the holes of each PTH (Plated Through Hole) in a calculated amount that will result in a good solder volume (at least 75% fill of the hole)6. Pin In Paste process was studied in all its step to verify the viability of its application in current industry technology with acceptable results. Three components for each technology were chosen and a PCB was designed to increase solder volume and quality. Accurate stencil apertures were projected to increase THCs solder volumes, in order to achieve 100% of hole fill. The reflow profile was traced to do a good reflow in all components. All results were analyzed using optical microscopy, x-ray images and metallographic cuts. The results proved that Pin in Paste is a good choice to eliminate wave-soldering using reflow process for THCs with SMDs.
a

Experiment A PCB test card was designed to contain the most industry used SMDs and THCs, in order to understand if the PIP can be used in real productions, with different thermal masses around the board. Three different SMDs were chosen: 0402 chip resistor, 0805 chip resistor and QFP-44. For the THCs, it was chosen only components that could be reflowed: Pin Header (10 pins), DB-09 and a two terminal Fuse. The huge mass difference of those components increase the reflow thermal profiling challenge as small components could be easily soldered but not bigger packages such DB-09. SMD and THC pads were projected accordingly to IPC standards7. The design of the stencil was performed to achieve the best solder relation between SMT and PTH components. The SMD apertures were designed as its described in IPC standard8.To determine the THCs apertures, it was necessary to consider firstly the solder volume desired. Equation 1 shows the components of the THC solder joint. [1] VS is the total solder volume Vh is the PTH volume Vf is the fillet volume Vp is the component pin volume inside the PTH As half of the solder paste volume will evaporate during reflow, the volume of solder paste (VSP) that should be printed to achieve the desired solder volume (VS) is:

[2] VSP is the solder paste volume to be printed F is the solder paste volume reducing factor after flow For this work the factor F was considered equal to 0.5, as this is the most used value in literature. The PTH hole volume is calculated by:

[3] Dh is the PTH diameter tb is the PCI thickness After that its necessary to calculate the solder fillet volume (Vf), which is a positive solder protuberance around the terminal on and under the hole. [4] is the fillet radius is the componente terminal radius

The volume occupied by the pin inside the hole is:

[5] Arranging all the equations above it could be found the solder paste volume that should be printed on each PTH (VSP):

[6] As the stencil aperture is rectangular, VS will be: [7] Ls is the stencil aperture length Ws is the stencil aperture width ts is the stencil thickness The equation above was used to find the stencil aperture area:

[8] According to Littelfuse9, there should be a minimum distance between printed areas of 0,30 mm, to avoid shorts. Using this value, it was found the maximum aperture width Ws and then, the aperture length Ls. The tests were performed in a professional printer (Panasonic) using a laser cut stencil and a steel blade squeegee. The squeegee speed, pressure and angle of the printer were adjusted until the optimized solder paste volume was achieved (20 m/s for speed, 15 x 10-2 N/m for pressure and used angle was 60) The obtained solder paste volume was analyzed using a volume analyzer (Visionmaster). The reflow process was performed using a professional oven (Vitronics) with 13 zones and designed to lead free technology. The reflow curve was adjusted using a professional SMT profiler (Solderstar). The soldering results were analyzed by optical microscopy (Leica S8AP0 - for visible defects) and by X-ray (volume and internal defects). One last analysis was done by metallographic cut to search for voids. Results and Discussion Printer adjustment The printing process was adjusted until the solder paste printed over the pad has a good shape, complete stencil hole fill, without smudging. At the beginning the obtained shape of the printed blocks was not regular and some adjusts in the printer parameters was necessary. Figure 3 shows some results of the solder paste printing. As the THC holes have a big area, its possible to see some deformations at the edge of the

walls (Figure 1: a, b and c), but no problems could be related with that. These deformations were caused by the stencil detachment.

Figure 1. Photos of the soldering blocks of some components. (a) DB-09, (b) Fuse, (c) Pin Header and (d) QFP-44 The volume of the solder paste blocks obtained is shown in figure 4. The colors represent different height. In all the samples the high distribution was uniform, as show in figure 2, suggesting that the printing process was well adjusted and for a correct fill of stencil holes. The green layer represents the exact stencil thickness and the red layer is no mode the 10% higher than the projected height, which is acceptable.

(a) Figure 2. Solder blocks height measurements (a) QFP-44 and (b) 0402 Chip Reflow Profile

(b)

The PCB card test was sintered using the temperature curve shown in figure 3a. The obtained result is very close to the solder paste manufacturer datasheet (figure 3b)

(a)

(b)

Figure 3. Reflow soldering profiles (a) Measured profile on the experiment and (b) Solder paste datasheet profile THCs and SMDs soldering results The resulting solder joints are shown in figure 5. Its possible to see that the solder had wet both components terminals PTH and SMD. The SAC lead-free solder past proved to be a good choice for both types of components, showing good wettability in all cases. The SMT terminals shown in figure 4 a) and b) are well wetted by the solder.

In figure 5 c) and d) the PTH terminals are well covered by the solder revealing that the paste filled the entire hole.

(a) (b) (c) Figure 4. Components terminal SMD and PTH after sintering process (a) QFP-44, (b) 0402 Chips, (c) DB-09 and (d) Fuse

(d)

The X-ray analysis in these samples reveals a complete filling of the holes. It is a good result because one of the challenges of these work was verify if the lead and component terminal could be wet by the solder and fill at least 75% of the hole at same time the SMD components are well soldered. Figure 5 confirm, for Pin Header and Fuse, that is possible to solder both components types at same process step.

Figure 5. X-Ray Images of Pin header, Fuse, DB-09 and top view of DB-09 The last analysis was done using metallographic cut on some samples, that showed 100% fill in all images and some voids inside the solder joints. Regardless all the THCs solder joints showed 100% fill, some of them (most in Pin Header) showed a fillet angle of more than 90, a clear sign of solder in excess. The solder voids that appeared inside the solder joints were completely acceptable in literature6 and theyre probably related with a big amount of air injected in the hole during the terminal insertion. Figure 6a shows three DB-09 terminals with 100% fill in all of them. Figure 6b exhibits the most important defect that happened in the solder joints, the excess of solder. This is easily visualized by the high fillet angle (that cant be greater then 90) and can be avoided only by reducing stencil apertures in order to decrease solder paste volume. Figure 6c show some voids that were found in some cuts, but do not compromise the solder joints. The last picture (6d) shows a perfect THC solder joint (one of a Fuse terminal), with 100% fill and positive fillet in both sides.

(a)

(b)

(c) (d) Figure 6. Methalografic cuts photographs of the PTH terminals after reflow (a) DB-09, (b) Pin Header, (c) DB-09 voids and (d) Fuse The obtained results were compared with IPC standards and previous literature2,3,4,5,10. For the Pin Headers connectors and the Fuses, all the holes were filled by the solder paste. The DB-09 connectors showed almost no soldering interconnection; which can be explained by an improper reflow profile and a too fast insertion of the pins. Some Pin Headers exhibited solder beading. Conclusions The Pin-in-Paste process appears as a good choice to eliminate the usual THC step in electronics assembly, the wave soldering, as discussed in some other papers2,3,4,10. In this study it was identified some problems regarding excess solder, like solder voids and high angle fillets. Lead-free solder paste, regardless its known low wettability, showed good solder fillets and wetting. The minimum solder volume of 75% was achieved in all components, which allow it to decrease stencil holes volumes for next experiments to eliminate most of the defects. Acknowledgements We would like to thank the LSI and LSI Tech for the installations and machines, Micropress for manufacturing the stencil and PCBs, and Celtra for supporting this work. References 1. Coombs, Clyde F.; Printed Circuits Handbook; Fifth Edition, McGraw-Hill, 2001 2. Ning-Cheng Lee, Reflow Soldering Processes and Troubleshooting: SMT, BGA, CSP and Flip Chip Technologies, Newnes, 2000. 3. S. S. Tonapi, K. Srihari. Internat. Journal of Prod. Research, Vol. 38, 4553 (2000) 4. P. Manjeshwar, S. Shaherwala, J. Craik. IERC, 579 (2002) 5. G. Wable, Q. Chu, P. Damodaran. FAIM, 770 (2003) 6. IPC-A-610C - Acceptability Of Electronic Assemblies 7. IPC-SM-782A - SMD Design and Land Pattern 8. IPC-7525 Stencil Design Guidelines 9. Littelfuse Pin in Paste Application Note 10. Seeniraj R., Manessis D., e Westby G. R., A Comprehensive Evaluation Of The Strength Of AART Solder Joints, 1998 IEEE/CPMT IntI Electronics Manufacturing Technology Symposium