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February 2016 • SMT Magazine 21 ravi M. bhatkal, Ph.D. is the vice president of energy technologies at Alpha Assembly Solutions, a MacDermid performance Solutions company. cost declines. This combination of capabilities and favorable economics is enabling a whole new range of applications and markets, includ- ing obvious markets such as displays, automo- tive and general lighting, and emerging markets such as indoor vertical farming, IoT and visible light communications. In the general lighting space in particular, which is the biggest emerging space using LEDs, significant LED systems cost reductions are be- ing enabled through the availability of super and ultra-high power LED packages, for appli- cations such as street lighting. Implementation of such packages in reliable, long lifetime sys- tems calls for higher reliability, high operating temperature capable interconnects. Creep resis- tance of the solder alloys used is a significant determinant of solder joint reliability in high CTE mismatch assembly stacks under thermal cycling conditions. Solder joints with improved mechanical and thermal fatigue/creep and vi- bration resistance and bond line uniformity, are possible by using micro-structural control ap- proach. Such alloys are being deployed now in commercial use. SMT Figure 3: Component shear data for ceramic based LED on MCPCB using creep resistant alloy, over 1,000 thermal cycles. HigH-reliabilitY iNtercoNNects For HigH-PoWer led assemblY