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Semitracks Newsletter for May 2008Upcoming Courses Semitracks continues to expand its course offerings this year with new courses and new locations. We are also offering several courses in India for the first time this spring. For more information on these courses, and our courses in North America and Europe, click on the links below. Wafer Fab Processing: June 23-26, 2008, Kuala Lumpur/Singapore Advanced Thermal Management: July 16-18, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Packaging Technology: August 3-4, Tel Aviv, Israel ESD Design and Technology: August 3-4, Tel Aviv, Israel RF & Mixed Signal Testing: August 4-7, Penang, Malaysia Packaging Design: August 5-7, Tel Aviv, Israel Failure and Yield Analysis: August 5-7, Tel Aviv, Israel Semiconductor Reliability: August 19-22, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia For a full listing of our upcoming courses, click here. Other Events of Interest Technical Tidbit
This month's technical tidbit covers solder ball formation. Solder balls can be formed in one of two ways – stamp and reflow or solder jetting. *The stamp and reflow process starts with either solder wire, or a sheet of solder material. The solder wire is cut into small cylinders, which are then subjected to an elevated temperature to reflow them into solder spheres. The sheets are stamped into small cylinders and reflowed to create solder spheres. The reflow operation is accomplished by dropping the cylinders into a liquid thermal transfer medium that is stable at the liquidus temperature of the solder alloy. The medium is also a material that is inert to the solder itself, such as Fluorinert. Once in the medium, the cylinders will liquify and form spheres. This occurs because the solder attempts to minimize the free surface area. The spheres can then be collected, and the liquid medium residue can be removed using a solvent such as acetone. *The second method is solder jetting. In the solder jetting process, solder is melted into a liquid in an inert environment such as argon or nitrogen. Elevated pressure on the inert gas forces the liquid solder through a small orifice. This action, coupled with a periodic impulse and a small amount of oxygen, breaks the stream into small droplets. The size of the droplets can be controlled by the overpressure and the size of the orifice. The spheres are then cooled in an inert environment and are collected for use. Online Training We have continued to expand our online training materials over the past year. We have added a significant amount of new material in the reliability section, as well as new material in a number of the other sections. Our material contains flash-based courses, quizzes, and interactive exercises, as well as PDF materials for off-line reading. To see an example of one of the quizzes in the system, click here. Test your knowledge of CMOS and Bi-CMOS Process Integration. Call us at 1-505-858-0454, or e-mail us at info@semitracks.com for a free trial account. Question and Answers Learning can take many forms. Sometimes, an in-depth course on a topic is necessary to provide a minimum working knowledge of a subject. Other times, online training can help supplement knowledge on a topic or facilitate exploration of a subject. Still other times, one requires an answer to a specific question. This is where online discussion forums can be quite useful. Semitracks provides online discussion forums on a number of semiconductor-related topics. Click here or view the box below to see an example. Access to the discussion forums is free, however you must register to post a question. You can do so at http://forums.semitracks.com. Reference Materials Semitracks makes some of its materials available for free on our website. At this time, the reference material contains some basic information on some design and failure analysis topics. Here is an example showing information on leakage curve testing. To access this material, go to http://www.semitracks.com/reference.htm. Suggestions/Comments If you have a suggestion or a comment regarding our courses, online training, discussion forums, reference materials, or if you wish to suggest a new course or location, please feel free to call us at 1-505-858-0454, or e-mail us at info@semitracks.com. We are always looking for ways to enhance our course materials and offerings. Subscribe to our Newsletter! The Semitracks newsletter, mailed out once a month, updates you on the latest in training. We provide dates for upcoming courses, terms and definitions used in the industry, upcoming conferences, industry trivia, and examples of our online training. |
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