How reliable is your leadfree solder joint?

After years with thousands of seminars, workshops and conferences around the electronics world including predictions and warnings about the consequences of the lead ban, we have now, 6 months after the implementation of the RoHS directive, reached the point where many companies with high quality electronic products realise that transferring to lead free soldering production will not necessarily be a piece of cake. IPC and Soldertec Global have accepted the challenge and taken a firm grip on the subject of Reliability. A number of experts in the reliability field have been engaged such as Jean-Paul Clech who will give an in-depth review of “Lead Free Solder Joint Reliability" and Dr. Yoshiharu Kariya, active at the Shibaura Institute of Technology, presenting “Fatigue Characteristics of Lead free Solder Alloys". A number of European experts from the ELFNET project, including IMEC, Ericsson, IVF, EMPA and the Fraunhofer Institute will detail the latest European perspective.