Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1207026
82 SMT007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2020 Nash: It depends on the technology at hand and what's being addressed. If you were to think about the mobile world and 0201 metric components, printing process challenges are going to one main concern. We have a good take on the material side of things and being able to print materials for 0201 metrics and reflow 0201 metric size deposits; however, the process is going to need to be optimized, and that the main stress point should be process optimization. You're not going to be able to put the assembly and the solder paste on a line and run it without doing process optimization. Further, process optimization could be a number of things. It could be machine settings or fixtures like tooling fixtures specific to the board that you're using. It could be the stencil technol- ogy or the stencil thickness and aperture size. There are a lot of factors that go into optimizing a printing pro- cess to be able to manufac- ture circuit boards with 0201 metric components repeat- ably and reliably. The automotive market is another area where we see a miniaturization trend, but it's not to the lev- els of the mobile market at this point. When you talk about solder paste materials in the automotive realm, they're transitioning from the typical Type 3 solder paste to a Type 4 sol- der paste, and, in some cases, there might be applications for Type 5 materials. Again, it's not to the extent of mobile technology. Matties: Is the medical market moving into this space as well? Nash: The medical market is a broad market from an electronics standpoint. You might have medical equipment that doesn't need fine pitch- type components, and you might have wear- ables that need fine pitch or tight spacing on the board. It's a broad range within the medical market. Some of the medical products resem- ble consumer products more than typical med- ical products, such as a watch that monitors heart rate or blood pressure. You can say the same for military and aerospace as well, where some of these applications require small circuit boards, especially if they're wearable devices, because you don't want to wear a bulky elec- tronic device around on the battlefield. Matties: That will grow at an accelerated pace. Nash: It will. You will see a lot of wearables in hospitals and medical settings, but they may be throwaway or recyclable items. They might be one-time use products. I know a lot of compa- nies, including Indium Corporation, are look- ing at recycling within the industry, whether it's on the packaging or materials side. Recy- cled tin, for instance, is a topic at a number of differ- ent multinational companies nowadays. Matties: Do you see a trend to toward low-temperature sol- ders as well? Does that play into this? Nash: Yes. It has been a topic within the industry for a few years, and a lot of people have exciting thoughts about low-temperature solders. There is a pretty wide array of low-temperature alloys available on the market. Low-temperature sol- dering is something that Indium Corporation has been involved in from our founding in 1934. At Indium Corporation, we also strive to improve our solder paste flux vehicle tech- nology along with developing new alloys. It is important to ensure the flux technology is cur- rent and will handle any of the challenges that manufacturing sees. Many of the alloy offerings in this realm have been around for quite a while, such as the common indium-based or bismuth-based alloys. Indium-based solders tend to be a little more costly than SAC solders, and many peo- ple don't take the time to break down the per board cost to see the marginal difference. Bismuth-based solders tend to be brittle by nature, so drop-shock performance or mechan-