INDIUM CORPORATION

Folks,

The impetus for writing the Patty and the Professor series, in 2009,  <posts here>  <hardcopy book here> came from my observations that many assemblers were not very focused on productivity.  Productivity seemed to be an afterthought.  Since then little has changed.  This conclusion seems astounding, since all assemblers are in business to make a profit.

In light of this situation, I have developed 10 questions, valued at 10 points each, to help assemblers assess their profitability potential. If You are a printed circuit board assembler, take this quiz and see how you rate:

1. Although quality may be job 1, our company has a strong focus on productivity. At all levels everyone understands that, when the line is down, we are not making money.
2. We have a practice, understood by all, that if a line is down more than a specified amount of amount time, the line down situation is escalated through the management chain.
3. All of our operators, technicians, and engineers have been trained in procedures to assure the minimum amount of downtime.
4. We measure and graph our line uptime and other productivity metrics.  Everyone knows the approximate value of these metrics.
5. Our component placement machines are time balanced.
6. We use feeder racks and other preparation devices to prepare for the next job while the current job(s) are running.
7. A major consideration in the purchase of our assembly equipment is its effect on productivity, not the equipment’s cost alone.
8. A major consideration in the purchase of our assembly materials, such as solder paste, is its effect on productivity (e.g. poor paste response to pause would be a strong rejection criteria,) not the material’s cost alone.
9. We us productivity and cost metrics, such as non-material assembly per I/O assembled (NMAC/I/O), to track our performance.
10. We understand that sometimes an added expense, such as solder preforms, can actually reduce the total cost and increase productivity and profitability.

Ratings:

• World Class: ≥ 90
• Above Average: 75 - 89
• Average:  55 - 74
• Below Average: < 55

How did you do?  Let me know what you think. We hope to have this online soon.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

PS:  Here is my golf score in a recent one man scramble. I was hoping to break 60 and it worked out.

现在在中国和亚洲的大规模SMT生产，都是 air convection reflow 空气回流炉，应该很少有vapor phase reflow 气相回流了。因为气相回流时间长，每次回流的板子量少，而且回流使用的液体成本相对较高，这些都不利于SMT的大规模量产。

可是在美国这里，却有不少客户在使用，准备使用，或是在咨询关于气相回流的信息以及我们相应的锡膏推荐。我总结了一下，客户大概分为这两种：

·      医疗器械：不单单是美国这里，许多欧洲公司也越来越多用气相回流来做医疗器械板子。主要的驱动原因是气相回流有助于减少tin whiskers。 有许多实验数据证明，气相回流可以大大减少 tin whiskers,无论是有铅还是无铅的焊接材料。医疗器械的电子产品一般使用的时间相对较长，而且关于到生命、密切的人体接触，很多产品都是3类产品；所以对“需要时间来形成的tin whisker”问题会比较关注。 如果你搜索一下“vapor reflow + tin whisker”，网上应该会有许多相应的文章的。

·      大的厚的板子： 在普通的回流炉里，大的厚的板子很容易受热不均匀，最高温点和最低温点的差值大而产生各种问题。比如说板子厚，板面和板底温度差大，而使板子表面先扩张而弯曲（板翘）。而在气相回流炉里，整个板子均匀受热，可以大大减少许多这些因为温度差或是受热不均匀产生的问题。

Indium公司的各种焊接产品，比如说 Indium8.9 系列产品，都不单单能应用在普通回流炉中，也能应在在气相回流中。

Cheers!

Image source.

Folks,

Pity the copper age smelter of 3000BC.  He had to get his wood fire to 1085°C to smelt or melt copper, sometimes he couldn’t get that high a temperature.  Even when he was successful, his copper didn’t flow well and was soft. 

But the winds of change were occurring about that time, news of tin was in the air.  When tin is mixed with about 90% copper, the melting temperature of the resulting bronze plummets to 850°C, this temperature drop, of over 200°C, is a big deal.  Not only did the lower temperature make it easier to melt the bronze, the bronze would flow better in molds.  In addition, the strength and hardness of bronze is many times that of copper.  From the figure above, you can see that a 10% addition of tin to copper produces a bronze that has 3 times the yield strength.  The Bronze Age had begun. Can you imagine the joy of the early metal smiths as they transitioned from copper to bronze, not only was bronze harder and stronger, but it was much easier to process and required less precious wood in the furnaces.  On the downside, tin was then, and still is, rarer than copper, so the cost of bronze is higher than copper alone.  Poor man’s bronze is brass (copper and zinc).  Since zinc is cheaper than copper, brass is less expensive, but from the chart (left), the materials properties are typically weaker than bronze.

Because of its greater strength and hardness, bronze was an important material for war.  If you had equal fighting ability to your enemy and he had a bronze sword and shield to your copper weapons you would lose every time.  So bronze smelting and manufacturing was likely an early military secret.

An equally important benefit of tin, is that when tin was alloyed with lead, a very low melting material was created that would bond to bronze and other metals.  Soldering  was invented.  Those of us that use solder everyday often don’t recognize the miracle of soldering.  When we solder electronic components to a PWB we are essentially bonding copper to copper (which melts at 1085°C) at a temperature of less than 250°C.  We do this metallurgical bonding in the presence of thermally delicate plastic.  So without solder, we would not have the electronics industry as it is exists today.

Tin does all of the “work” in soldering.  It is tin that forms the intermetallics Cu₆Sn₅ and Cu₃Sn with copper. The other solder alloying elements such as lead, silver, and copper play important roles in wetting, spreading, and the ultimate strength of the bond, but only tin metallurgically interacts with the copper.

So when you pick up your mobile phone, type on your computer, or watch TV today, remember - without the “Miracle of Soldering” you wouldn’t be able to!

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

The Image is from Askeland's The Science and Engineering of Materials.

I have been asked to explain why someone would want to use rotary sputtering targets instead of planar sputtering targets.

Certainly there is some expense involved with larger targets and new equipment (assuming you are currently using a planar system), but in a high volume process (such as roll-to-roll thin film deposition) the advantages lead to a lower cost of ownership:

• Compared to planar targets, rotary targets generally have more surface area per given length.

• Rotary targets have much more surface area, so the magnetron power can be spread out over a larger area in a given amount of time. This helps keep the target running cooler, decreases nodule formation, and reduces the occurrence of arcing.

1. Since rotary sputtering decreases nodule formation, targets can have longer continuous runtimes.
2. There is generally more material available to sputter on a rotary target, which increases runtimes.
3. Rotary target utilization is usually ~80%, as opposed to ~30% for planar targets – which decreases scrap and increases runtimes.

• Rotary targets are well suited for continuous sputtering processes. Continuous processing increases throughput since there is less time wasted preparing the sputtering chamber.

• Rotary targets are more cost effective for high volume processes. They provide a good platform for long runtime processes, with less chance of defects and downtime.

• Planar targets are still best suited for prototype work or elemental experimentation, especially when large amounts of material are not needed at once.

If you are interested in discussing sputtering targets, contact our team at: Solar@Indium.com

~Jim

Folks,

Some time ago I wrote a post, “In Search of Tin Whiskers,”  Michael responds below.  He makes some good points.

Dr. Ron, I'm responding to your  blog regarding tin whiskers. I actually have a failure analysis report I did a couple of years ago in which failure of our product was due to this issue and occurred on a part that came into RoHS compliance only 3 months prior.
 

I'm not sure that your question of identifying whisker issues in product that proper steps have been taken to mitigate the problem is a constructive one. The fact is that many of the component manufacturers from overseas jumped into compliance without any thought or regard to this issue thereby flooding the industry with components such as plagued my company. We have not had this issue since we've specified an alternate finish.

These whiskers are so delicate that most problems disappear when the technician starts to work on the failed unit and the problem never re-appears so it is written off as an anomaly, loose/bad connection and not investigated any further. It was only my own curiosity as to the number of "no problem found" failures of our keypads we had suddenly encountered that caused me to dig deeper and when I looked into the connector I was amazed at the crystal city staring back at me. I couldn't believe what I was seeing after all of these years.

After seeing this problem first hand I became, and am, quite convinced that there were and are people who will be losing life, limb, and property because this forced compliance with its risk was not given proper worldwide attention.

Michael.

A popular topic Re my blog is solder density calculations. Rhonda writes……

Hi Dr. Lasky,
I am a precious metals recycler and would very much appreciate your verifying the validity of an equation that approximates the Karat Value of various alloys of gold based on S.G. which I will call density or "D," and the Karat Value is "K." The equation is seems to hold relatively true even when the exact composition of the alloy is unknown, although the percent of error obviously will increase as density decreases. I would also appreciate not only verification but also more specific information on percent of error for densities below about 14 or 15 g/cc. Here is the equation:

K = 0.0089D^3 - 0.550D^2 + 12.5299D - 77.06

Thank you so much for whatever assistance you can provide.

Rhonda

These types of equations can only work for one alloying metal with the gold.  This one is only for copper.  It is also calibrated in Rhonda’s favor as it reads the karat level about 10% low.   I was able to determine this by using the Excel Solder Density worksheet that I developed. If the alloy was gold and lead, a 50% by weight gold (12 karat) would show as 15.7 karat with this equation and Rhonda would lose her shirt.

In response to my blog post on copper as the precursor to civilization, Harvey writes about pollution from early mining operations…..

Also interesting, early copper mining and processing led to the first examples of human induced environmental damage. There are documented sites in the Alps where copper processing by prehistoric peoples has left areas treeless to this day, due to heavy metal contamination.

Harvey

Mining and smelting were very tough businesses in ancient days.  In addition to pollution, many workers died from toxic fumes.

Dr. Ron

I was recently asked to gather some data comparing Indium Corporation’s tabbing fluxes and our largest competitor’s leading tabbing fluxes. Using a new method of solder spread testing found in an upcoming issue of Global Solar Technology, two Indium Corporation tabbing fluxes were directly compared to three of the leading competitor’s fluxes.

The test consists of these simple steps:

• Apply flux to cell
• Dry flux on cell
• Apply solder preforms on cell metallization
• Reflow on a hotplate
• Measure solder length

Finally, the measurements are plugged into the equation:

S = (L_f/L_i)100-100

                   Where:         S = Increase in preform length

                                      L_f= Final solder length

L_i= Initial length of preform

In the end, the Indium Corporation tabbing fluxes (GS-3434 and GS-5454) both caused the solder to spread ~44% further on a given cell – compared to only 13%, 15%, and 16% for the competitors' fluxes.

If you’d like to learn more about the test method or the results, or want help conducting your own evaluation, send me an email at solar@indium.com.

Do you ever have a need for a "low temperature" solder (meaning an alloy that melts at less than 175C)?

You may have delicate components that cannot withstand standard reflow temperatures, or maybe you are looking to reduce costs by lowering the reflow temperature, or you may be step soldering.  Whatever your reason, there are two unique metals that are used extensively in low temperature solder alloys.

The first one I am sure you can guess: Indium.  The other one is Bismuth. While these two elements are used extensively in the over 100 alloys available in the 50C to 175C range, they couldn't be more different from each other.

Indium is a very soft, malleable metal and remains so even at cryogenic temperatures. It melts at 156C.  Bismuth, on the other hand, is very brittle, even at room temperature, and melts at 271C.  But both lend themselves very nicely to solder alloys that melt below 175C.

Let's look at the two most common alloys in these families.

The two alloys:

• 52In 48Sn (Indalloy #1E) Melts at 118C
• 58Bi 42Sn (Indalloy #281) Melts at 138C

What they have in common are:

• Both are lead-free
• Both are tin-based
• Both are eutectic (liquidus and solidus temperatures are the same, with no plastic range)
• Both can be made into a wide variety of solder forms and can be used in low temperature applications

But the indium-based alloy will give you better compensation of coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) mismatch than the bismuth alloy.  The bismuth alloy has greater tensile strength but has a lower shear strength than the indium alloy and is generally not recommended in applications where the product has potential to be dropped (like cell phones).  The indium alloy will give you greater thermal conductivity than the bismuth, as well.  The bismuth will give you a cost advantage.

So, which alloy do you use?  Well, that depends on the metallizations you are working with and the environment in which your final product will be operating. For example, if you are soldering to two different surfaces that expand at different rates, then you will want to go with the indium alloy - to keep your solder joints from cracking.  But, there are a lot more considerations when choosing a low temperature solder, and we can help you sort through them.  Check out our Low Temperature Solder page on the web or contact us at AskUs@indium.com or contact me directly at cgowans@indium.com and we can answer your questions or put you in touch with one of our local experts to review your entire process for the best solution.

Let us help!

Carol Gowans

Maria Durham, Indium’s new Technical Specialist in Semiconductor and Advanced Assembly Materials, has been doing some research on indium lead (In/Pb) solder alloys. We chatted about her findings this week. 

 [Andy C. Mackie: ACM] Which indium/lead solder alloys are most common, and what are their properties?

[Maria Durham: MD] Firstly, the use of lead-(Pb-)containing solders in some soldering applications is restricted due to local environmental and RoHS compliance, but there are still many applications where they are  allowed. Many military, aerospace, and industrial equipment uses, as well as many applications related to vehicles, are exempt. The table below shows the most common indium/lead (In/Pb) alloys (pink) and their properties, sorted by liquidus temperature; the higher of the two melting points (solidus and liquidus) seen for non-eutectic alloys. In blue are three comparison materials.

Indalloy 205 is the most commonly used, probably because it has the closest liquidus temperature to the tin/lead eutectic (183°C), 63Sn/37Pb (Indalloy 106). This means it can be reflowed using a standard Sn/Pb eutectic profile. The next most common alloys that are used are Indalloy7, 204, and 206.  Besides the melting range, indium has comparable thermal and electrical conductivity to standard materials.

[ACM] What makes indium-lead (In/Pb) solders so attractive, and why have we seen a recent resurgence in their usage?

 [MD] One main attraction to using indium/lead (In/Pb) solder alloys in soldering to precious metal surfaces is that, unlike tin-containing solders, they do not leach gold. That is, gold does not dissolve in them to any appreciable extent. During discussions at Semicon West in 2011, one of our California customers reported going through 8 simulated reflows with Indalloy 205 in contact with a gold surface with no loss of joint strength and no joint embrittlement. That is pretty impressive. Note that embrittlement is often caused by gold-intermetallic formation. It has been noted that even at 250°C, 50In/50Pb dissolves Au at a rate 13 times slower than it does into 63Sn/37Pb, although this, of course, is a kinetic, not a solubility limit, study.

The higher melting Indalloy 164 (92.5Pb/5In/2.5Ag) has the lowest coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of all of the In/Pb solders and is able to withstand the higher temperature excursions that can be seen in step-soldering type applications (where a very high melting solder is used to form the first joint, followed by a next lowest melting alloy, and so on). This is seen in applications such as power electronics assembly, where the first step solder is often used for die-attach either as a solder paste, wire, or preform. The high melting point helps the solder withstand the operational temperatures associated with under-the-hood electronics, in applications such as engine control modules, where Indalloy 151 (92.5Pb/5Sn/2.5Ag) or Indalloy 163 (95.5Pb/2Sn/2.5Ag) are most commonly used. In/Pb solder is excellent on very rigid structures such as ceramic-to-metal or ceramic-to-ceramic. The desired solidus / liquidus temperature range can be adjusted by changing the indium:lead ratio, making it very easy to “dial in” the alloy to a specific reflow process.

Another attraction to using In/Pb solders is that they exhibit good fatigue resistance in thermal cycling from -55°C to 125°C.  In testing, the 50In50Pb solder joint fatigue life is about 100 times greater than that for 63Sn/37Pb.

 [ACM] What fluxes are used in these applications, and how are they formulated differently?

 [MD] The fluxes most compatible with the lower melting point (<200°C) indium-containing solders are NC-SMQ-80 (solder paste) or the lower-tack TacFlux® 012 (suitable for use with wire, preforms, and spheres). These are no-clean fluxes, specifically formulated for lower temperature reflow.  Under appropriate low temperature reflow these fluxes leave behind benign residues that do not need to be cleaned off (“no-clean” flux), although they are often cleaned off in most practical applications, usually to ensure reliable wirebonds absent of flux spatter.

 To learn more, please contact us.

 Cheers!  Andy

SMT: A Story of Solder Paste Printing Speed

近期我们有一个客户在解决一个和锡膏、芯片、工艺流程等相关的不良率问题。这是一款十分热门的电子消费类产品，在中国的两个主要加工厂量产。

我们公司十分积极帮助客户探讨最优的解决方案，除了及时送样品，我们的技术团队和销售团队还经常拜访客户，提供试样现场技术支持等。但是让我们很吃惊的一点是，客户在做各种试样测试时，锡膏的印刷速度居然是25mm/sec，这是行业里我见过的最低的印刷速度，虽然美国很多中小 加工厂都在用这个速度，因为他们的最终产品是高精尖的军用、航天、医疗器械等，数量不多，而且印刷速度不是瓶颈。

但是在中国或是很多亚洲国家生产的电子消费类产品 (consumer electronics),都是 low mix high volume 的大规模量产，每一条SMT线就像一台印刷钞票的机器，越短的 cycle time, 就能生产处越多的产品，那就更有更高的生产率（high productivity）。印刷速度有时候是瓶颈，所以在亚洲的加工厂，一般印刷速度比较快。

就拿这个客户在中国的两个加工厂来说，印刷速度在 50mm/sec到120mm/sec之间。 也就是说在这个印刷速度的条件下（虽然这只是条件之一）出现了问题……不同的印刷速度，很多时候会影响到锡膏的性能，因为印刷速度和压力能够影响到 shear force and shear speed，这些都是下锡量多少的重要决定因素。而下锡量多少，对很多锡膏性能表现的好坏都会起到决定性的作用，特别是客户现在在研究的不良率。

Musings on Metals: Copper

It could be argued that civilization began with the smelting of copper.  Although thousands of years before, humans fired clay to make figurines and containers, smelting required several non-obvious steps.  After all, the firing of clay, at some level, can be accomplished by simply dropping clay into a fire.

To smelt copper, our ancestors had to:

1. Take malachite (see photo) or another copper ore, grind it up or break it into small pieces
2. Mix the ground malachite with carbon
3. Heat the mixture in a vessel to 1,085^oC. 

Malachite Ore

Achieving this temperature with a wood fire is, to me, astounding.  Think about those days when you are grilling some burgers.  You leave the grill on after the burgers are done, to burn off the grease.  You come back 20 minutes later and the grill is at 500^oF.  You can feel the heat.  Even touching the knob to turn the gas off is intimidating, as the heat drives you back.  This temperature, 500^oF, is only 260^oC!  The ancients reaching 1,085^oC with wood and bellows is, indeed, impressive. By the way, a good rule of thumb to convert degrees C to degrees F from 100^oC to 1,500⁰C is that 2XC=F, this fast approximation is accurate to about 10% in this range.

The confluence of the three procedures is not only non-intuitive, but think how many times the smelter of old could only reach 900^oC and failed.  I have argued that if copper melted at 1,200^oC or so, civilization would have never gotten started.  This temperature is perhaps a little too high to reach with a wood fire.  The smelting of copper encouraged investigations into other metals, eventually resulting in the discovery of the processing of iron, an even less intuitive process than smelting copper.  So, I believe that the success with copper was necessary to the production of steel. 

Copper smelting became an industry that encouraged permanent settlements and stimulated trade, which encouraged writing and ciphering.  An effective copper smelter would likely keep secret some of his craft as he wanted a competitive advantage.  He could make more by smelting copper than doing anything else, so he almost certainly was an early specialist.

Considering all of this, I believe that without the discovery of copper smelting, we might still be living in huts or teepees, using stone tools, and living a nomadic existence without commerce, writing, or mathematics.  Examples to support this thesis are the state of native peoples in the Americas in the 1400s.  These native peoples had never learned to smelt metals and hence also lacked the follow-on aspects of civilization mentioned above.

Today, copper is a foundation material for electronics, given its excellent electrical conductivity, second only to silver.  Copper’s ductility likely aids in the formation of PWB traces and plated through-holes in that it resists cracking.

Additionally, copper's ability to form an electrical and mechanical bond with solder is another trait that makes it a winner as an electrically-conductive assembly material in modern electronics.

Copper has been used for more than 10 millennia, but, as with most metals, 90 to 95% of it has been mined since 1900.  About 15,000,000 metric tons (MT) are used each year, third to aluminum’s   22,000,000 MT and steel’s unequaled 1,000,000,000 MT.

In the next installment, we will discuss tin and how it forms an intermetallic with copper during soldering.  Thus making solder paste, solder wire, and solder preforms critical components of electronics assembly.

 Cheers,

Dr. Ron

Are you plating indium metal? If so, here’s a tidbit of information you might find useful [From a customer inquiry on the Indium Corporation website]:

Question: “Can the indium be deposited in specific areas of the target piece, i.e. a target with several metallic regions, where we would like to isolate just one? Or can it be easily masked?”

Answer: “Areas of metallizations not requiring plating can easily be masked off either by the use of plater’s tape, or, more commonly, with a screenable resist, either thermal cure or UV cure.”

For more information, always feel free to contact us at AskUs@Indium.com.

Folks,

One of the nice aspects of being a Professor at Dartmouth is teaching a course like ENGS 1: The Technology of Everyday Things.  This course is designed for non-engineering students and fills a technology and applied science requirement for them.  In the course, we cover the technology of the automobile, mobile phone, GPS, DVD players, the personal computer, etc.

This year, I purchased an iPad 2 and an Amazon Kindle Fire and added them to the topics.  I had three basic goals in this effort:

1. Discuss how they work
2. Compare them
3. Answer the question, “Will they replace my personal computer?”

So this week, instead of discussing solder paste, cost of ownership, solder preforms, or productivity, let’s see what I learned.

I did this analysis with two of my graduate students and reviewed the basic conclusions with Dartmouth IT staff and students in the class.  Here is a summary:

The iPad is a terrific device for organizing and consuming content such as videos, music, photographs, and, perhaps most importantly, games.  It is extremely intuitive.  My four, five and six year old grandchildren use it for games with no coaching.   With the iCloud, content can be organized and stored very simply.

However, for creating verbal or mathematical content, it is not intuitive or simple.  As an example,  assume you have a letter or paper from a colleague on a USB memory stick that you need to edit.  Apple so controls the “experience” of the iPad that you cannot load anything from a memory stick or any other device, like your PC, onto it.  You must send an email or load the content into iCloud.  The recommended software (or apps) for word processing, spreadsheets, or presentations for the iPad will work with MS Office, but I didn’t find the apps that great.  Saving and filing documents is also not that straightforward.  When I tried to create letters, papers, spreadsheets, or presentations on my iPad 2, I found myself longing for my laptop. I’m not saying it can’t be done, I’m just saying it wasn’t easy for me.  An external keyboard (about $70) makes data entry much easier. 

The Amazon Kindle Fire is only about 25-35% of the cost of an iPad.  In my opinion, the Android software is pretty good.  For consuming content, such as movies, books, photos, etc. the Fire is very good, but not quite as good as the iPad.  I don’t do games enough to make a comment. (Sometimes I feel as though I am the only one in the world who does not play Angry Birds.) For verbal and numeric content creation, the Fire makes working with MS Office documents easier.  It is also easy to store and load documents from a PC with a USB connection.

Both devices are beating the rest of the competition with their seamless connection to their respective stores.  I think this advantage that Apple and Amazon have over other devices has been understated. I believe Amazon Prime is a strong reason to consider the Kindle Fire.  In addition to free two-day shipping for purchases, members get many free videos and have access to a free lending library.

Steve Job’s said it best when he announced the iPad.  Quoted in Walter Isaacson’s outstanding  biography of Jobs, he said something like, “We have the iMac and we have the iPhone, now we have something in between.”  I think that is a fair summary.   The portability of tablets can make them ideal for passing family photos around, or for police to have a larger than mobile phone photo of a suspect to share with colleagues and witnesses.  Tablets can be stored in a suitcase or briefcase when going through airport security, a definite advantage.  But they are not a replacement for the full functionality of a PC.

The higher resolution of the iPad 3 enables viewing x-rays and CT scans and, of course, HD video.  The 10 hour battery life frees one from needing to have a power cord during the day, so it could be beneficial in meetings.  However, I found the Penultimate app, which allows writing on the screen, not that usable.  It was harder to get neat writing than with pen and paper, and the words were too large.  See the image.  The documents formed would (again!) have to be emailed to get them from the iPad to another device.  It would make more sense, to me, to take notes on paper and scan the paper into a PDF. Modern scanners make this act a snap. Apple makes it almost a necessity.

In summary, for a user like me who creates papers, blog posts, Excel® spreadsheets and PowerPoint® presentations, a tablet is a weak substitute for a laptop.  For consuming content like videos, books, music, and photos, or for playing games, they are tough to beat.

Which of the two do I use the most?  The Kindle Fire, mostly due to the connection to the Amazon store for books and free videos from Amazon Prime.  I think this device, at a fraction of the cost of an iPad3, may be more of a threat to the iPad than many people think.

I'd like to hear your thoughts and opinions. Please comment!

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

Solders, as a class, are "interesting" metals.  And the properties of indium-containing solders are exceptionally interesting.  Indium’s (and indium's alloys') physical and mechanical properties are unique when compared to the metallic elements and alloys typically examined.

To put this into context, a metallurgist from a customer company called me because, after looking over our table of solder alloy properties, he claimed our data couldn’t possibly be correct!  After a detailed conversation, I understood the nature of his concern.  His background was not in solder materials, and the shear strength data for indium (890PSI) is exceeded by its tensile strength (273PSI). This "interesting" situation prompted further questioning.  These numbers are, however, accurate.

The graph on right numerically depicts the shear nature of this material.  Over a test area of approximately 0.5 square inches, a soldered interface that was sheared at a rate of 1mm/minute to fracture extended 1.6mm before yielding. This extension is indicative of the putty-like nature of pure indium.  As expected, The load at yield roughly matched the shear strength cited above for the bulk material  because the yield location in this assembly was through the bulk material, rather than along the intermetallic edge.    

More extensive information on the physical constants of indium can be found in this application note.

Finally, click here to link to more information on indium metal properties and its uses.

As a sneak peak:

• Indium has a low vapor pressure when molten, rising quickly as the boiling point approaches (2080°C)
• Indium cold welds to itself
• Molten indium will wet glass and glazed ceramics
• Although the softest metal, indium will impart hardness, when added as an alloying agent to other metals such as gold. In fact, the gold indium alloys are used in dental crowns.

上周是一年一度的行业盛会APEX, 这次的地点在风景优美的海滨城市San Diego. 

我代表公司参加了展会。这次的客户流还是很多的，许多客户都是带着特定的问题来和我们交流。同事们都热情招待了客户，提供了解决方案和介绍了产品。 我们也很高兴看到许多现有的“老客户”特意来我们的展台和我们打招呼！

在众多的技术论文和演讲中，Low Ag Alloy, Parkage-on-Package (PoP), Finer Solder Powder, QFN Voiding等是热门的话题。许多客户和同行们都十分欣赏Indium公司常常能发表如此有科技含量的技术文章。其实这些文章都能够在Indium公司的主页上免费下载：http://www.indium.com/techlibrary/whitepapers/

最好笑的是我们的一位同事听到一个竞争对手在公众场合大声讲电话，那个人说公司所有经理都几乎被老板骂了，因为老板看见Indium公司有8篇技术文章在展会上被演讲，而这个公司一篇文章都没有……

Cheers!

PS: 一个有意思的小插曲，展会的某天晚上和一个重要客户吃完饭后，我和同事在回酒店的路上碰见同行朋友，被抓去当地的钢琴酒吧（钢琴手现弹现唱，并和在场的所有人互动）。同行朋友和我开玩笑，“骗”钢琴手和在场所有人说那天是我的生日，结果我被拱上台，坐在钢琴上面，听现场所有男士起立唱了一首美国著名情歌“You’ve lost the loving feeling” ala Top Gun；第一排的男士还半跪做各种深情的动作……Hahaha，城市中劳累了一天的人们都以各种理由找些乐子，放松放松。

Folks,

Let’s look in on Patty and Pete and see how they are handling Rex “The Torrent.”

Patty wanted to give Pete a little more exposure so she nodded to him to chime in.

“It is true that Pinnacle’s line cost only 70% of Optoplace’s line and it does have a lower ‘cost of ownership’ in that it costs less to own, but we lose our shirt because of its 6 hours per week less uptime,” Pete began.

Torant stormed in, “There ain’t no way that 6 hours a week can make up for 30% savings in cost of ownership. We must be talking about over $600,000 dollars difference in capital cost.”

Patty heard this comment and wondered why people that make poor arguments need to add bad grammar, too.

“Torant makes a good point Pete,” Madigan quickly interjected.

“Actually it is $660K in additional initial capital investment per line, plus about $40K a year in service for the higher profit potential line,” Pete responded with a smile.

“I told you so,” Torant said excitedly.

At this comment Pete put up a PowerPoint® slide that showed the resulting comparison:

Pete explained, “The average of 6 hours/week of increased uptime in our typical 3 shift operation results in the additional production of more than 22,000 units per line per year for the higher profit potential line.  Each line producing on average more than $340,000 more profit.”

“But that’s not as much as the additional $660K cost of the line,” Torant countered.

“The extra capital cost is included in the calculation,” Pete calmly replied.

“Well, Torant, that’s one you lost,” Mike Madigan said in a way that indicated that discussion on this point was finished.

Torant looked temporarily defeated, but he recovered quickly. “What about the solder paste? Ultima costs $0.02/gram less than the ElectroMaterials paste,” Torant challenged.

“That’s true,” said Patty. “But we have to stir it out of the jar for it to print well, and it has poor response to pause.”

Torant wouldn’t let her finish, “But that can’t make up for two cents per gram,” he snarled.

“Not true,” Patty snapped back. “Every time the line is down for a short time we have to wipe the first print because the transfer efficiency is so poor.  We lose an hour a week of production time.  In addition, when we are printing a lot, the paste shear thins and we have to replace it with fresh paste.  We actually pay more for the Ultima paste because we scrap so much.  However, the lost time is what hurts the most financially.”

“Only one hour per week!" Torant screamed. “I spend more time than that on smoke breaks. One hour per week can’t possibly make a big difference.”

Patty rolled her eyes and then displayed another slide that showed the profit comparison.

“This slide shows that by using the Ultima paste we lose over 3,700 units of production and over $140K of profit per year per line in that 1 hour hour per week.  One hour per week is 52 hours per year, let's not forget” Patty responded.

At this, Torant slammed his fist on the table, packed up his briefcase, and literally left the room in, well.... a torrent.

Patty, Pete, Madigan, and Sam just looked at each other.

“Well, maybe we won’t have to put up with him for awhile,” Pete said smiling.

“Nice work Patty and Pete", Madigan said. "Let’s develop an implementation plan phasing everything in you recommended as soon as is practical.”

Patty was always surprised when Madigan showed a little warmth by calling her and Pete by their first names.

“Sure thing, Mike,” she answered.  It was the first time she ever called him by his given name.

“Oh, and I guess it was a good thing we didn’t get around to discussing solder preforms,” Patty teased. "The ones Torant sells have too much flux and they gum up the pick & place nozzles.”

With that comment, they all chuckled and took it as a key that the meeting was over.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

March 13th is the 78th anniversary of the founding of Indium Corporation.  Dr. William S. Murray, J. Robert Dyer JR, and Daniel Gray combined to create a company that was, in 1934, on the cutting edge of technology at the time - and that still is today.

Although some of the initial attempts to utilize indium were decidedly low-tech (plating of silverware and use in gold dental alloys), the first real breakthrough came when Mr. Dyer developed the process to indium-plate aircraft engine bearings to make them last longer.  Today our indium metal is in thermal interface materials, batteries, medical devices, aerospace devices, solar panels, flat panel displays. Of course, the full range of Indium Corporation products (including materials that contain no indium at all) can be found in a myriad of electronic devices.  We hold a wide variety of patents and have conducted endless tests and experiments including some aboard the space shuttle.

In between we have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and many other technology journals and received awards for our technical expertise and our customer service.

Our original founders were very "hands on" in their approach to developing their company and we still follow that approach today.  Our sales and technical staff, locally located around the world, are as comfortable in a lab or on a production floor as they are presenting a technical paper.

Contact us at AskUs@indium.com to utilize our expertise and let us help you with your challenge.

Shown here is an original bottle of indium solder preforms with a hand written label.  Today we have a variety of packaging options with printed labels and bar codes to fit your product and application.

Carol Gowans cgowans@indium.com

Reducing the surface oxides of Nitinol is just the first step in getting a good solder joint with this versatile medical assembly material.

Next you have to choose the right solder alloy.  You will probably want to stay away from anything containing lead, cadmium, or antimony, particularly in medical applications.  And you will want something with a high tensile strength.

The best choice is Indalloy #121 (96.5Sn 3.5Ag).  It has a tensile strength of 5,620 PSI and a melting temperature of 221C and is obviously lead-free.  It wets well to the cleaned Nitinol.

If you need a higher melting temperature solder (one that can withstand autoclave temperatures for example) you should consider Indalloy #182 (80Au 20Sn) which melts at 280C, has a tensile strength of 40,000 PSI, and has long been considered a highly reliable solder.  Additionally, this alloy is available in very fine diameter solder wires to minimize waste.

Soldering temperatures should be 25C to 50C above the liquidus temperature of whichever solder you use and proper cleaning should be always be performed afterwards.

Contact us at medical@indium.com for more information about soldering for medical devices or visit our web site at www.indium.com/medical

Carol

It is common to hear people that are skeptical about CIGS technology ask questions like:

• "Aren't indium and indium tin oxide (ITO) thin film deposition processes wasteful and inefficient?"
• “Aren’t we going to run out of indium soon? Doesn't the world use more than we produce!”

What are the truths?

Here they are:

WASTEFUL: A well-run process is NOT wasteful. Why? Recycling!

At first glance, a process like indium planar target sputtering seems ridiculous – generally only 30% of the indium actually makes it onto the substrate it is destined for (and that’s in a well-tuned process). As it turns out, the material that doesn’t land on the substrate is too valuable to just scrap. This translates into recycling, a lot of recycling…

According to presentations given at Minor Metals 2012: “indium production will total 1,500-1,700 tonnes in 2012, with virgin supply accounting for around a third of total output”.  It’s incredible that recycling accounts for such a large percentage of the indium used in the world today.

INDIUM AVAILABILITY AND SUPPLY: Another important conclusion made at the conference was (as reported in Metal Bulletin):

“proven indium reserves from existing mines at 50,000 tonnes, a volume that will be sufficient to satisfy demand for the next 75 years”.

While it’s not news at Indium Corporation, it is definitely assuring news for those looking to get involved with CIGS technology.

~Jim

在平时和客户们的会议交流中，因为Indium公司的产品线比较广，不同的客户群常常有针对自己独特的应用或是技术、销售服务等各种问题。

刚刚开始正式做一线销售，我有时候在会议前会有点紧张（特别是新的客户），怕自己回答不上客户的各种问题，帮不上忙。但是后来老练了一点，即使有些问题我自己真的不懂或是即时没有答案，但是总是可以“follow up”跟进的。会后积极主动利用各种资源找出答案，及时回复客户就好了。 现在的会议中， 我更会了“审时度势”的提问，从客户口中问出对项目、生意有用的信息。

最近我们在联系一个国际大客户做一些项目。 客户要求我们的科研副总裁李宁成博士(Dr.Ning-Cheng Lee)过来和他们交流，做一个roadmap meeting. 客户还提出相关的内容请李博士来讲。在我们和李博士内部交流后，决定先向客户提问，问清楚他们的需求后，我们才好“对症下药”。 比如说，客户想了解低银合金Low Ag Alloy, 低温合金在波峰焊中的使用Low Temp Alloy for Wave Soldering，微间距印刷0.3mm fine pitch printing等等。我们知道客户已经在使用别的供应商的SAC0307的低银合金了，并且客户的NPI工厂里没用波峰焊，但是为什么客户会叫我们来介绍呢？对现在的SAC0307合金不满意？哪些性能不满意需要改进呢？波峰焊又是怎么一回事呢？等等。 所以，我们也决定向客户提问，问清楚他们为什么有这些“需求”，真正的原因是什么……

有一个销售同事更有意思，当我告诉他我有一个做激光设备的客户（他们在使用我们含铟金属的材料），有一次我被客户的几个“资深工程师”追问关于铟金属的一些不太相关的问题，我根本不知道答案……我的销售同事建议说，以后出现这种情况，当你觉得他们问的东西有点过的时候，你可以反问他们一句“Why you asked this question? Why you want to know?”  这样就可以尝试挖掘出客户问问题的真正目的了。当然，要见机而行!

Cheers!

Pic: Google Image

Somewhat related: I found this picture in a reference text at a bookstore. It reminded me of the picture that Carol Gowans shared in her latest blog post about indium availability.

The caption states: “A lapel pin from a company obviously proud of its work with indium.”

It's true, we ARE very proud of our history and our company. If you have questions about indium metal, why not talk to people who share live your interest?

Send your questions to AskUs@indium.com.

~Jim