Development and Validation of Tin-Whisker Growth Model and Accelerated Testing

The essential step in the manufacturing of electronics systems involves soldering components to printed wiring boards. Copper and other metal leads to be soldered must be protected from oxidation during storage. Preffered protective coating for over fifty years was tin-lead solder. With passage of RoHS Directive that increased pressure to remore lead from electronics assemblies, new coating must be found. Pure tin is at the present time preffered drop-in option, but it suffers from whiskering phenomena that can cause catastrophic failures in electronic circuits. Understanding the mechanism of the whisker formation, modelling the causes, and facilitating a simple and inexpensive accelerated testing method to evaluate whiskering tendencies of the components can significantly deccrease the risks of the prenomena and allow for safer and wider usage of pure tin coatings for solderability preservation.