Indium affirms great advances in technology due to materials

Indium Corporation is a premier materials supplier to the global electronics, semiconductor, thin film, thermal management, and solar markets.

Products include solders, and fluxes; brazes; thermal interface materials; sputtering targets; indium, gallium, germanium, and tin metals and inorganic compounds; and NanoFoil. Founded in 1934, Indium has global technical support and factories located in China, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the USA.

Ross B. Berntson, president and COO said: "We are a materials manufacturer. Every great advance in technology is due to materials. We have come out with new materials. We introduced the 8.9HF solder paste. It was designed to have very low voiding."

Indium8.9HF solder paste is part of a family of high-performance, lead-free, no-clean solder pastes. The series was designed to provide multi-faceted performance characteristics and tailored to every specific manufacturing process. Each paste in the series optimizes print performance and mitigates common defects faced by the manufacturers of personal electronics.

Indium8.9HF:

* Delivers excellent response-to-pause, even after being left on the stencil for 60 hours.

* Maintains excellent printing and reflow performance after remaining at room temperature for one month.

* Demonstrates consistent printing performance for up to 12 months when refrigerated.

* Resists premature flux spread to prevent surfaces from oxidizing.

* Performs with both Pb and Pb-free alloys.

Berntson added: "We are manufacturing materials. We believe that materials science can change the world. Type 3 powder is of the majority use in India. Type 3 powder is the standard offering with SnAgCu, SnAg, and other Pb-free alloy systems. Type 6 and type 7 powders are now being developed." In order to print a TACFlux 008 and J-STD-004, it is getting into finer stencils.

Indium is manufacturing the Indium8.9HF 1 solder paste in Chennai. The Chennai facility is a modest size to make solder paste, about 2,800 sq ft. It is located near Guindy. It is likely to go live in November 2019.

The Indium8.9HF is used for mobile phones and automotives. HF1 is used for networking infrastructure. There are four new SMT companies in India, at Electronica 2019. Here, some lines have two stencil printers. They are driving the demand. The key issue here is: how is the loading? For instance, a printer can run 8 hours a day. Indium also has the Indium3.2HF, a Pb-free water-soluble solder paste.

BiAgX is a high-melting, lead-free (Pb-free) solder paste technology that serves as a drop-in replacement for the high-Pb solder pastes used in many high-reliability die-attach and electronics assembly applications.

MEMS is also of interest to Indium. BiAgX has low temperature processing point. Semiconductor packaging has not yet arrived in India. However, its present in Malaysia, Korea, China. Inside packaging, there is flip-chip.

Berntson noted: "5G is a monster market for Indium. We are in the 5G infrastructure market. There should be good thermal management to cool the towers. LV1000 is an ultra-flat flux-coated preform. LV1000 flux coating is a solution to voiding and more. It eliminates fluxing step and ensures very low voiding."

Jonas Sigfrid Sjoberg, associate director, Global Technical Service & Application Engineering, added: "We sell specific products for specific applications. India will have different needs. The factory brings us closer to India.

"For automotives, we have controller boards. We also have auto paste. We give consistent high reliability on throughput. In ADAS, the Indium8.9HF is used across the globe. ADAS also has sensors. Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) is interesting for us."

He added that new fluxes are required as they are seeing everything going smaller in the semiconductor world. HF1 testing probes can penetrate the residues.