Plasma treatment for fluxless soldering

Plasma treatment of printed circuit boards (PCB) with solid solder deposits (SSD) makes it possible to eliminate the application of conventional flux in reflow soldering process. This work deals with the dependence of surface modification of eutectic SnPb solder materials on gas pressure and gas flo wrate of the CF4/air (10:1) gas mixture in the reactor. After plasma treatm ent, both metal fluoride and polymer formation is detected. The correlation between gas pressure and gas flowrate determines a regime for intensive pl asma polymerization. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.