As the industry continues on its lead-free quest, the basic direction has been a drop-in replacement or other replacement scenarios for tin-lead solder. Although these lead-free solders are being fairly widely used in product today, defects such as tin whisker growth, reliability issues resulting from high-temperature cycling and the drive to perpetually smaller PCBs means we as an industry have to think outside the box when it comes to PCBs and assemblies.

A white paper on solder-free assemblies was made available on the Web this week. Industry critics who have kicked the paper’s tires so far say that although it brings about fear of change, they found it to be positive from an advanced technology standpoint.

What do you think?