By Ron Iscoff, Editor [chipscalereview.com]

With the implementation of RoHS due in less than a year, most companies are racing to become compliant.

By this time next year, the global electronics industry will be wrangling to "stay legal" with the European Parliament's Directive 2002/95/EC.

Known formally as a directive on "the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronics equipment (RoHS)," and published in the Official Journal of the European Union on Jan. 27, 2003, this legislation will dramatically change the way every segment of the global electronics industry does business.

RoHS includes a complementary bill, Directive 2002/96/EC, which addresses waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).

Although the lion's share of media and manufacturer attention has gone to getting the lead out of electronics, the directives also target the elimination of cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls and polybrominated diphenyl ethers.

The prohibition of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) legislated by the Montreal Protocol on "Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer," enacted in 1987, may in retrospect, seem like a cakewalk, compared to the new European directives.

Disruptive

Dr. Ronald C. Lasky, senior technologist for the Indium Corp., Clinton, N.Y., says July 1, 2006 will issue in "The most disruptive event in the history of electronics manufacturing." After July 1, it will be illegal to sell almost all electronics products if they contain any RoHS-prohibited materials.

It gets even worse, says Dr. Lasky: "We believe that it is likely that a number of electronics manufacturers will go out of business due to lack of RoHS compliance."

Companies that have not taken the RoHS directive seriously, thinking it might "go away," are probably already in trouble, Dr. Lasky tells Chip Scale Review. Even though this directive is for the moment strictly a European one, any company that sells to Europe, or sells to a distributor or reseller or end user that sells to Europe, will have to be RoHS compliant.

Dr. Brian Toleno, application engineering team leader at the electronics group of Henkel in Irvine, Calif., observes that manufacturers switching to lead-free products must be ready for cost increases in materials, manufacturing and end-product costs.

A key question, adds Dr. Toleno, is how manufacturers "plan to address these increases, given the unyielding push toward lower-cost manufacturing."

RoHS restrictions are "changing the way that electronics assemblies are designed and built, from the components and assembly materials to the solder reflow profiles and inspection criteria used," he adds.

Additional Impact

While solder alloys have claimed the spotlight, RoHS will also impact component finishes, temperature ratings, board finishes and flame retardency issues," Dr. Toleno emphasizes.

"Even those companies manufacturing products that are temporarily exempt from RoHS will face challenges," he says. For example, as component and board makers respond to the manufacturing shift, it will be difficult for the exempt companies to source other than Pb-free components or to find PWBs that are not lead free.

The European directives will affect virtually everyone in the electronics industry, from PWB makers to IC packaging foundries.

Based on the amount of information now available on RoHS, it appears that the larger manufacturers of soon-to-be prohibited materials have taken the issue quite seriously.

A white paper published by Under-writers Laboratories Inc., notes that implementation of RoHS will vary among EU member states, who may set their own penalties for non-compliance.

Fines 'May Be Significant'

Penalties will include fines, "which may be significant." While the United Kingdom has not yet enacted laws related to RoHS, its Department of Trade and Industry, according to UL, "has suggested that [violators] may face an unlimited fine, depending on the severity of the violation."

Virtually every segment of business involved with the production of semiconductors will be impacted by the European directives. Ironically, while RoHS will be costly and complex to implement, it is also providing something of a heyday for corporate PR and marketing machines.

In what can best be described as the "domino effect," almost every semiconductor maker has trumpeted its conversion to less lead/no lead in its packaged ICs.

This July, Advanced Micro Devices of Sunnyvale, Calif., the second largest supplier of microprocessors behind Intel, boasted in a press release that, "AMD began this month offering microprocessors with reduced lead content to customers worldwide, nearly one year in advance of a regulatory deadline to reduce lead in electronic products."

National Semiconductor says it will save five tons of lead a year by replacing its complete product line with Pb-free packages. (National Semiconductor)

Identifying Solutions

In the same announcement, AMD said that it "began identifying solutions for production of lead-free semiconductor packages in 2001. AMD has formed a lead-free research and development program and is working with suppliers and other industry leaders to establish lead-free standards and testing requirements...."

About two months earlier, its neighbor a few miles to the south, National Semi-conductor Corp., Santa Clara, said that it would achieve total lead-free package production by the end of June 2006.

National added that in addition to getting the lead out of all packages, the company "has also significantly reduced bromine and antimony-based flame-retardant materials from its packaging processes."

National formerly employed lead in the plating finish of copper, leadframe-based packages. Lead was also used in the solder balls of area-array packages such as the Micro SMD, PBGA and FBGA.

National has replaced the lead in leadframe packages with a matte-tin finish and substituted a tin-silver-copper alloy for lead in micro SMD and tin-silver for PBGA and FBGA packages.

When National has completed the conversion, it says it will have replaced about five tons of lead per year.

Meeting the RoHS deadline will represent a substantial effort for any semiconductor maker, and especially so for those with a large product line, such as National that claims 15,000 analog and mixed-signal ICs in its portfolio.

The directives will also bring about significant changes at every IC packaging foundry in the world, from the smallest to the largest.

Lead-free packages by finish type (Amkor Technology Inc.)

Moving Targets

A few years ago, there was widespread industry speculation regarding the potential impact of RoHS. Today, says Jeff Cannis, senior manager of process engineering at Amkor Technology Inc., Chandler, Ariz., "The speculation is gone and the impacts are well known. Essentially every aspect of semiconductor packaging has been influenced in one way or another."

From a technology viewpoint, adds Cannis, there is a continuing effort to develop and qualify new packaging materials. "This is the single largest impact of the RoHS Directive and consumes a significant level of resources."

Efforts include:

• Encapsulation materials to eliminate banned substances and survive Pb-free assembly conditions

• Substrates that are Pb-free and "green" compliant

• Leadframes with pre-plated Pb-free finishes

• Solder-ball alloys that do not contain Pb but provide acceptable solder-joint reliability

• Pb-free lead-finish processes

"To complicate matters farther," says Cannis, "the requirements for the new breed of Pb-free and green packages have been and continue to be moving targets."

Cannis observes that the IPC/JEDEC J-STD-020 standard for moisture sensitivity has been under a constant state of revision for the past few years, as peak reflow temperature requirements are being established.

"Any changes to this document," says Cannis, "may require companies to repeat expensive and time-consuming reclassification testing of packages."

Cannis has "an unsettling realization that the IC packaging industry is only partly ready for the implementation of RoHS. Therefore, the development activities and costs will continue to climb as July 1, 2006 approaches."

At Amkor competitor Malaysia-based Carsem, Glenn Koscal, the company's director of new package development, observes that packaging material costs to comply with the RoHS standard are currently more expensive than materials used previously.

"This (added expense) is certainly contrary to the expectations of our customers for continually reduced prices," Koscal says.

"We hope that, over time, the mold compounds, die-attach epoxies and other materials used in packaging will decrease in cost, as the industry's usage increases."

Carsem, a large, Malaysia-based packaging foundry with additional facilities in China, says the implementation of RoHS will increase prices of packaging materials.Ê(Carsem)

Price Erosion

Currently, however, Koscal says, "it is not clear at this point that costs will decrease quickly enough to offset the market price erosion for assembly packaging services."

Unfortunately, higher materials expense is not the only bad actor for compliance, Koscal adds. "There is also an added cost for the newly required RoHS compliance declarations and documentation to assure our customers and their end customers that the final product's ppm levels of hazardous substances meet the standards."

In addition, Jerry Cohn, president of Pure Technologies LLC, Atlanta, notes there is a little-known reliability problem in lead-free technology, especially in advanced packages like CSPs and direct attach/flip chips.

"With the move to Pb-free materials, many people in the semiconductor industry think that if they are using a lead-free alloy (like Sn/Cu or Sn/Cu/Ag, etc.) for CSP interconnects, they will not have to worry about soft errors and their resulting reliability problems.

Soft Errors

"They think that since tin has no radio-active isotopes like lead, they do not have to worry about soft errors from alpha emissions." They are "wrong!" says Cohn, who believes it's necessary to be very careful when buying tin or tin alloys.

Most tin that is available is recycled product from secondary smelters and it is "virtually impossible not to have this tin slightly contaminated with some ppm of lead." It is best to use virgin tin which has been specially processed, says Cohn-and even this grade may contain some lead.

Conclusion

Are the European hazardous substances directives a calamity in the making for the global electronics industry? We won't have the answer to that one until the smoke clears, sometime after July 1, 2006.

The experts, however, say that anyone who's not already on the no-Pb bandwagon, better get moving now, because tomorrow will be much too late. Companies who are unwilling-or more likely-unable to stand the additional expense of complying, should probably use their remaining time to hook-up with a partner that can.

Editor's Note: What's so bad about lead, anyway? See Terry Thompson's sidebar here.