Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Soldering & Surface Mount Technology, Volume 21, Issue 1

Welcome to the latest issue of Soldering and Surface Mount Technology. At the time of writing this editorial, I find myself half way between two major conferences that are so pertinent to the themes covered by this journal. In September, the University of Greenwich in London hosted the 2nd Electronics System Integration Technology Conference (ESTC 2008) and in December Singapore will host the 10th Electronics Packaging Technology Conference (EPTC 2008). Having attended the ESTC 2008 Conference, it was a somewhat overwhelming experience to see the huge quantity and breadth of work that was presented at the meeting. With contributions from 32 countries, 252 papers, 8 poster sessions and 384 delegates, it was clear that this conference really has established itself as a world class and truly international event. Having looked at the advance programme for EPTC, I am sure that this will also be an event of a similar scale and significance. While conferences such as these are just one of the ways that enable researchers to learn of new developments, they also provide a valuable opportunity to network and to establish new contacts. In this issue there is a report giving an overview of the ESTC Conference and, for those readers with a specific interest, I would commend to you the proceedings of the conference which are published by the IEEE. I hope to be able to include a review of the EPTC Conference in the next issue of SSMT.

This issue also includes four other papers on a range of subjects being studied by researchers from around the world. In these four papers there are reports on research being undertaken in Canada, China, England, Korea, Taiwan and Scotland. In a paper on the ultrasonic bonding of flexible PCBs to rigid PCBs using a tin interlayer, Kyoo-Seok Kim, Jae-Pil Jung and Y. Norman Zhou report on the results of a study into the feasibility of direct ultrasonic bonding between contact pad arrays on flexible printed circuit boards and rigid printed circuit boards at ambient temperature. The second paper is from workers at Greenwich and Heriot-Watt Universities in the UK and details work on optimisation modelling for thermal fatigue reliability of lead-free interconnects in fine pitch flip-chip packaging. Stoyan Stoyanov, Chris Bailey and Marc Desmulliez present details of their work on an integrated optimisation-modelling computational approach for virtual prototyping that helps design engineers to improve the reliability and performance of electronic components and systems through design optimisation at the early product development stage.

In the third paper Hongbo Xu, Mingyu Li, Yonggao Fu, Ling Wang and Jongmyung Kim detail their work on geometry control of solder interconnects via induction heating. This team, which is based in China and Taiwan, describe their work to control the height and shape of solder interconnects employed in electronic packaging applications by an induction heating reflow method, which can achieve a solder bumping and interconnection process in a simple way.

The fourth paper is on the estimation of flip-chip package lead-free solder joint reliability using FEM-based sensitivity analysis and is by Chang-Chun Lee,Kuo-Chin Chang and Ya-Wen Yang. This paper describes work on the establishment of feasible and robust packaging technology solutions related to the integration of copper and low-k interconnects into the next-generation integrated circuit chips, particularly for devices below the 90 nm technology node. The nature of the low-k materials and the use of lead-free solder greatly increase the complications in terms of ensuring enhanced packaging level reliability and they describe how these challenges must be resolved while developing various advanced packages.

This issue of SSMT thus contains a wide range of papers that I hope will prove to be of interest to readers. I would like to offer an open invitation to all readers who may be attending relevant conferences to submit their reports and reviews for inclusion in future issues. While it may be possible to cover some of the bigger international conferences, such as ESTC and EPTC, there are many other smaller, but no less interesting, seminars and related events taking place around the world that would be of interest to SSMTreaders. Please therefore feel free to send your reports to me at: m.goosey@lboro.ac.uk

Martin Goosey