Ion contaminants from Printed Circuit Board (PCB) assembly processes pose a high reliability risk because they result in damaged circuits. Therefore, it is essential to understand the level of ionic species on the electronic circuitry as well as the reliability risks caused by these contaminants. There are a number of approaches available in the industry to assess the reliability risks ; for example, the water drop test (WDT) is one of the techniques used to determine the propensity of an ionic contaminant to cause electrical short failures by dendrite formation. The objective of this research is to determine the time to cause the failures, known as electrochemical migration (ECM) failures. A test vehicle was developed for the WDT to obtain the time to cause ECM failure in presence of different anions. The time to form dendritic bridges that cause short circuits was determined as a function of the different anions and the spacings between PCB pads. The experimental method involved dispensing aqueous solutions containing common inorganic and organic acid anions onto test vehicles, applying electrical bias voltages and measuring the time to form dendrites. Specially designed test structures cells were created to contain the test solutions. At each of the test cells, a cavity held the solution and constant current was applied through different metal geometries. To be representative of popular board finishes, test vehicle boards incorporated both Sn-Pb Hot Air Soldering Level (HASL) and Pb free HASL surface finishes.

Engineering for sustainable development requires prudent utilization of resources under economic, environmental and societal constraints. Resource utilization must follow a holistic approach. This brings in a need for comprehensive metrics which are simple, standard and universal. Thermodynamics may offer a metric that focuses on both quality and quantity of energy resources which may carry information to be combined with other metrics. This metric may be a thermodynamic property called exergy or available energy, which provides a better insight into resource use in both energy and non-energy producing systems. This thesis is devoted to a study of the exergy concept in manufacturing. A high volume PCB assembly, manufactured in a state of the art soldering facility is chosen for the study. Various mass and energy resources flowing through the production line were quantified in terms of exergy. On the basis of exergy content and exergy utilization in the production process, the sustainability in terms of resources use is discussed. An early version of this approach was presented at the International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technologies, IEEE, Washington DC, in May 2010.