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80 SMT Magazine • November 2016 by Patty Goldman I-CONNECT007 At SMTA International 2016, I caught up with Joe Russeau, president of Precision Ana- lytical Laboratory, to discuss the paper he was presenting, which was co-authored by Mark Northrup and Tim Estes. Entitled, "Chemical Data vs. Electrical Data: Is One a Better Reliabili- ty Predictor," the paper presents early data com- paring the results of two different analytical test methods to determine how well they correlate with each other as predictors of PC board clean- liness and reliability. Patty Goldman: Joe, can you please tell me, and our readers, a little bit about your co-authors? Joe Russeau: Mark Northrup is the VP of Tech- nology for IEC Electronics. He's the one that got us started on this project. Tim Estes is the CEO for Conductor Analysis Technologies. Goldman: Tim is the PCQR² guy. So tell me about your involvement. Russeau: As for my involvement, I own and op- erate a cleanliness testing lab. My focus at the lab is on residue analysis, so we do ion chro- matography, surface insulation resistance and electrochemical migration testing. In my view, the three of us, with our different backgrounds, were an excellent fit to work together on this kind of study. Goldman: So tell us about the paper and what prompted this testing. Russeau: Basically our paper is trying to com- pare whether or not there's any correlation be- tween the electrical data generated by the PCQR² test—that's a conductive anodic filament (CAF) test—and IPC's ion chromatography test (IPC- TM-650, method 2.3.28). The concern here is that within the industry, there is an increasing drive to smaller devices. Component popula- tion densities are increasing as board real estate shrinks. Hence, there is an increased urgency in understanding cleanliness impacts to product reliability and how to accurately measure those risks before product goes into the fi eld. The ba- INCREASING RELIABILITY Through Predictive Analysis INTERVIEW