Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/550232
26 SMT Magazine • August 2015 by Mike Bixenman and David Lober, KYZen; Mark McMeen and Jason Tynes, STi ElECTroniCS, inC. The golden age of the Internet, digitization and social networking is in full swing. These technologies enable the Information Age from which every company and entrepreneur can cut costs, innovate new offerings and reach billions of new customers. Embedding information and telecommunication technologies in the form of sensors will increase productivity throughout the entire economy [1] . Information technology drives processing speed, memory storage and, ultimately, new capacity. Technology is constantly improving digital product innovations that are increasing- ly faster, more efficient, more useful, more af- fordable and more powerful [2] . Speed is enabled from denser circuit designs, tighter pitch and shorter line spacing. The risk of residue present on the surface and under bottom terminations can impact chip performance at these shrinking dimensions. How Clean Is Clean Enough to Achieve Reliable Electronic Hardware? Reliable hardware is more challenging to reproduce due to component size, residues trapped under bottom terminations, shorter distance between conductors, higher pinout devices in a smaller footprint, increased electri- cal field and environmental factors [3] . There is no one universal test method for quantifying reliability risks. The amount and nature of the data generated depends on the product being FeAture figure 1: example of residue under bottom- terminated components (bTcs).