Apr 28, 2015 
KYZEN is pleased to announce that it will present at the Toronto SMTA Expo & Tech Forum, scheduled to take place Thursday, May 21, 2015 at the Hilton Toronto/Markham Suites Conference Centre in Markham, ON. Dr. Mike Bixenman will present the paper titled “How Clean is Clean Enough?”
Highly dense assemblies with small gap distance between adjacent leads or interconnects increase the electric field and potential for leakage currents from contamination sources. Bottom terminated components soldered onto the PCB have flux residue trapped between the component body and board. Ionics in flux residue can exacerbate contamination levels under the component.
Dr. Bixenman will discuss Surface Insulation Resistance testing and how it can be used to test the resistance between the anode and cathode. When there is ionic contamination present, resistance drops. An improvement to SIR testing was introduced at the IPC/SMTA High Performance Cleaning and Coating Conference. The method places sensors under component terminations in an effort to measure resistance of the residue at distances close to and away from the pad termination.
The theory behind this new test method is to provide a method for accurately measuring resistance of the contamination at the specific area under the component. The purpose of this research is to use this new test method to measure the resistance on non-cleaned and cleaned test boards using a low residue, rosin and water soluble solder pastes under a series of bottom termination components.
Dr. Mike Bixenman, CTO of KYZEN, has more than 20 years of experience in the design of electronic assembly cleaning materials and process integration. He was the chair of the 2008 IPC/SMTA Cleaning Symposium and is the current chair of the IPC Cleaning Handbook Task Group. Dr. Bixenman holds four earned degrees including a Doctorate in Business Administration.
KYZEN® is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries.
KYZEN is a global leader in providing environmentally responsible, RoHS compliant precision cleaning chemistries for industries ranging from electronics and advanced packaging to metal finishing and aerospace applications. Since its founding in 1990, KYZEN’s innovative cleaning technologies, scientific expertise and customer support have been repeatedly recognized with the industry’s most prestigious awards. For more information, visit www.kyzen.com.
