Abstract
Motivated by the environmental awareness, printed circuit board (PCB) with the lead free solder and halogen-free (named as PCBF) is gradually replacing the traditional PCB with (tin) lead solder and halogen PCB in most electronic products. PCBFs are harder and more brittle than traditional PCNs, and therefore the corresponding board-level is less reliable, where the board-level is defined to be the solder joint between the packaging components and PCB. There is no evidence in the literature of analyses of the board-level reliability for PCBF. This paper provides an assessment of the board-level reliability for PCBF. In this study, drop impact and cyclic bend test are used to evaluate the board-level reliability of PCB under dynamic bending. Traditional experiments, designed by JEDEC22-B111 standard, suggest placing 9 packaging components in each testing board. Three factors considered are: (1) two kinds of lead free solder balls, (2) halogen and halogen-free PCB, and (3) PCB with or without filler. Results show that location of each packaging component should be considered as the fourth factor since it influences the reliability for PCBF. To minimize the influence of the location factor, we suggest to place 4 packaging components into four corners in each testing board. The new experiment design is not only more effective, but also more economic compared with the traditional one.