Climatic Reliability of Electronic Devices and Components

This article provides an overview of the climatic reliability issues of electronic devices and components with a focus on the metals/alloys usage on PCB a surface together with cleanliness issues, humidity interaction on PCB a surface, and PCB a design and device design aspects. The miniaturization of electronic systems and the explosive increase in their usage has increased the climatic reliability issues of electronics devices and components, especially when metal/alloy parts are exposed on the PCB assembly surface or embedded within the multilayer laminate.

Problems are compounded by the fact that these systems are built by multi-material combinations and additional accelerating factors such as corrosion causing process related residues, bias voltage, and unpredictable user environment. Demand for miniaturised devices has resulted in higher-density packing, with reduction in component size and closer spacing thereby increasing the electric field, while thinner metallic parts need only nanogram levels of metal loss for causing corrosion failures.