Report from the IEEE/CPMT Session held at the NEPCON West ’99
NEPCON West ’99 Conference and Exhibition took place in its standard location in Anaheim, California, February 22-25, 1999. This event is most known for its very large and well-attended exhibition that fills all the halls of the Anaheim Convention Center. Less known is the accompanying Technical Program that is held at the Marriott Hotel. The 3-day conference had 42 sessions, with 7 sessions running in parallel any given morning and afternoon. Best attendance for the conference is found on Monday, before the exhibits open,
after which the Conference also competes with the giant Expo with close to 1,000 exhibitors.
This year, IEEE CPMT Society agreed to sponsor one of the technical sessions. The initial idea was that the session would feature some of the papers given at last year’s ECTC Conference in San Jose. As such, the papers would not have been submitted in the Conference Proceedings (a hefty 3-volume set, which can also be had as a CD-ROM). However, as the recruiting process for those speakers got under way, it was realized that the presentations would not be duplicates of the ECTC Conference and that additional speakers would be presenting, so ultimately the session and its papers did get into the Conference Proceedings.
The IEEE/CPMT Session (Session no. 41) was held on Wednesday, February 24 at 1PM and was titled "Materials and Reliability Issues in New Plastic Packages," reflecting the nature of the papers presented. The session had a full program of 6 speakers; number of speakers in other sessions varied from 4 to 6. The first three presentations related to package reliability issues, while the last three covered materials used in packages and their reliability issues.
The first paper was given by Dr. Reza Gaffarian, who heads up the JPL Quality Assurance Office effort in determining the reliability of new BGA and CSP packages. He presented some of the failure mechanisms seen in the testing of these packages and discussed the various issues in their assembly. Rick
Sigliano of Kyocera presented the development of new plastic packages that are designed to replace the traditional ceramic packages. The approach uses a novel set of materials which are based on ceramic polymer composites and can tailor the desired dielectric constant. The third paper was given by Dr. John Xie of ProLinx and it described the reliability testing of a novel BGA package that uses a metal core. The additively processed circuitry uses photoimageable dielectrics providing for filled vias and high-density circuitry on a high thermal dissipation copper substrate.
Michael Todd of Dexter Electronic Materials gave a presentation on the effects of moisture on underfill mechanical properties. The role of the intrinsic material properties as well as the interface adhesion on the reliability properties related to moisture exposure was presented. The use of Newtonian
Molecular Modeling and Discrete Modeling Techniques in predicting material trends was presented by Dr. Nancy Iwamoto of Johnson Matthey. This work, done in collaboration with the Colorado School of Mines is seeking to extend the use some of the latest techniques that have recently gained popularity in the
pharmaceutical industry to the field of electronic polymers and use to use them in determining material parameters such as flow and surface properties.
Dr. Jack Zhang of Dexter Electronic Materials (QMI) presented a theoretical as well as experimental analysis on the effect of material properties of die attach adhesives on stress in molded plastic packages. The presentation discussed the effects of cure shrinkage and moisture on the stresses that are generated in the packages. The presentations raised several questions from
the audience on the issues raised.
Latest information on the NEPCON set of conferences is that the conference organizers have partnered up with SMTA (Surface Mount Technology Association) and that SMTA will help in the organization of future NEPCON Technical sessions. Meanwhile, IPC has announced that a new Electronics Assembly
Process Exhibition and Conference will debut next year, organized by its Surface Mount Equipment Manufacturers’ Association (SMEMA).
--Dr. Goran Matijasevic, IEEE/CMPT Session Chair