ME Students Receive Best Paper Award

The International Microelectronics and Packaging Society (IMAPS) and the 2011 Military ATW Committee awarded ME graduate students and Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) members Sungwon Han and Curtis Johnson, along with faculty advisors Professor Michael Pecht and Dr. Michael Osterman, the 2011 Best Paper Award for their paper “Effectiveness of Conformal Coatings on Surface Mount Components as Tin Whisker Mitigation”. The paper was presented at the 2011 High Reliability Microelectronics for Military Applications Workshop in Linthicum Heights, Maryland, which was held from May 17-19, 2011. The award-winning paper examined the application of conformal coatings as a mitigation strategy to address failure risks presented by tin whiskers. The award includes a plaque and a cash prize of $1,000. Below is the abstract for this paper.

Conformal coating is considered to be a mitigation strategy to address the failure risk presented by tin whiskers. While various conformal coatings have been shown to be effective on whiskering tin plated coupons, the effective-ness of conformal coating on actual assembly hardware has not been adequately examined. In this study, sets of assembled quad flat packages were conformally coated and evaluated for tin whisker mitigation as well as the coating coverage. Six coating materials were examined. Whisker growth was examined after specimens were subjected sequential to temperature cyclings, corrosive gases and temperature and humidity conditions. Whiskers were observed on coated surfaces that had relative thin layer of coating. Paralyne C coating was found to be the most effective coating at whisker mitigation in terms of overall coating coverage and containing whiskers.

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Published June 17, 2011