Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1518339
APRIL 2024 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 9 and functional test requirements are not the same. In other words, some unique investment is required when committing to box build, especially if you aspire to build the OEM's fin- ished product and drop-ship their orders. In this issue, Joe O'Neil gives a business-level tutorial on how box build is its own animal. Jon Schmitz, business development head at River- Side Integrated Solutions, provides a day in the life of a company specializing in both assembly and box build. Columnist Mike Konrad brings a second practical perspective to his interview with two assembly experts doing box build. Since it's wiring that connects the boards to the box, we also talked in-depth with Chris- tina Rutherford, a materials engineer specializ- ing in aviation wiring harnesses, about the role of wire harness manufacturing and standards developed by both WHMA and IPC. In addition to the feature content, we bring you a case study on the contribution of inspec- tion equipment at ADCO, and an article by Susan Kayesar on how cloud-based ser- vices are contributing to improved design for manufacture throughout the manufacturing chain—including assembly. Dr. Jennie Hwang starts her column series on artificial intelli- gence, and we round out the issue with a box- build/wire harness related paper from the IPC APEX EXPO 2023 Technical Program on test- ing pull force on crimped connectors. (I guess there was some practical information on this issue, aer all.) If you aspire to grow your business, increase your margins, generate "more sticky" customer relationships, or do any combination of the three, you will find information on in this issue that will further your understanding and per- haps even help you avoid pitfalls. SMT007 Nolan Johnson is managing editor of SMT007 Magazine. Nolan brings 30 years of career experience focused almost entirely on electronics design and manufacturing. To contact Johnson, click here. Solid-state batteries store and release charge by nudging ions back and forth between two electrodes. From our usual point of view, the ions flow through the battery's solid electrolyte like a gentle stream. But when seen on an atomic scale, that smooth flow is an illusion: Individual ions hop erratically from one open space to another within the elec- trolyte's roomy atomic lattice, nudged in the direction of an electrode by a steady voltage. Those hops are hard to predict and a challenge to trigger and detect. Now, in the first study of its kind, researchers gave the hopping ions a jolt of voltage by hit- ting them with a pulse of laser light. To their sur- prise, most of the ions briefly reversed direction and returned to their previous positions before resuming their usual, more random travels. It was the first indication that the ions remembered, in a sense, where they had just been. The research team from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Oxford University and New- castle University described what they found in the Jan. 24 issue of Nature. "You can think of the ions as behaving like a mixture of cornstarch and water," said Andrey D. Poletayev, a postdoctoral researcher at Oxford who helped lead the experiment when he was a postdoc at SLAC. "If we gently push this corn- starch mixture, it yields like a liquid; but if we punch it, it turns solid. Ions in a battery are like electronic cornstarch. They resist a hard shake from a jolt of laser light by moving backwards." (Source: SLAC) A Battery's Hopping Ions Remember Where They've Been