Electronics Failure Analysis

Take advantage of our expertise and knowledge from years of supporting the electronics and manufacturing industries.

The electronics industry has undergone much change over the last few decades with miniturisation and the transition to lead-free the most significant. 

The result is component obsolesence and compatibility issues as the assembly process evolves to accommodate different temperature ranges and newer materials and coatings.

Support has been provided across the sector to address issues such as:

• Wetting issues between lead-free alloys and coatings, particularly in fine-pitched and BGA applications
• Elevated processing temperatures and higher propensity for oxidation in solder
• Need for more aggressive fluxes to overcome the oxidation, and the implication of these flux residues
• Tin whiskers resulting from elimination of lead from solderable coatings
• Solder-free solutions to joining in electronics, e.g., conductive adhesives, crimping
• New failure modes from the lead-free process, e.g., head in pillow, tombstoning
• Coating adhesion and uniformity where new materials have been adopted to replace tin-lead
• Hot shrinkage tears as a result of off-eutectic solidification
• Use of counterfeit components in high reliability applications
• Long term reliability issues in thermally cycled/shocked assemblies
• Compliance with the RoHS directive  

For more information or to discuss your electronics failure analysis requirements, please contact Dr Wayne Lam at wayne.lam@brunel.ac.uk.

You can return to our main Commercial Services page to see what else we have that could support your requirements.