PCB Technical - PCB surface treatment process

The most basic purpose of PCB surface treatment is to ensure good solderability or electrical properties. Since natural copper tends to exist in the form of oxides in the air, it is unlikely to remain as original copper for a long time, so other treatments are needed for copper.

1. Hot air leveling (spray tin)

Hot air leveling is also known as hot air solder leveling (commonly known as tin spraying). It is a process of coating molten tin (lead) solder on the surface of the PCB and flattening (blowing) it with heated compressed air to form a layer that is resistant to copper oxidation. It can also provide a coating layer with good solderability. During hot air leveling, the solder and copper form a copper-tin intermetallic compound at the joint. When the PCB is leveled with hot air, it must be submerged in the molten solder; the air knife blows the liquid solder before the solder solidifies; the air knife can minimize the meniscus of the solder on the copper surface and prevent the solder from bridging.

2. Organic Solderability Preservative (OSP)

OSP is a process for surface treatment of PCB copper foil that meets the requirements of the RoHS directive.

OSP is the abbreviation of Organic Solderability Preservatives, which is translated as Organic Solderability Preservatives in Chinese, also known as Copper Protector, or Preflux in English. Simply put, OSP is to chemically grow a layer of organic film on the clean bare copper surface. This layer of film has anti-oxidation, thermal shock resistance, and moisture resistance to protect the copper surface from rusting (oxidation or sulfidation, etc.) in a normal environment; but in the subsequent welding high temperature, this kind of protective film must be very It is easy to be quickly removed by the flux, so that the exposed clean copper surface can be immediately combined with the molten solder into a strong solder joint in a very short time.

3. The whole plate is plated with nickel and gold

The nickel-gold plating of the board is to plate a layer of nickel on the surface of the PCB and then a layer of gold. The nickel plating is mainly to prevent the diffusion between gold and copper. There are two types of electroplated nickel gold: soft gold plating (pure gold, the gold surface does not look bright) and hard gold plating (the surface is smooth and hard, wear-resistant, contains cobalt and other elements, and the gold surface looks brighter). Soft gold is mainly used for gold wire during chip packaging; hard gold is mainly used for electrical interconnection in non-welded areas.

4. Immersion gold

Immersion gold is a thick layer of nickel-gold alloy with good electrical properties on the copper surface, which can protect the PCB for a long time; in addition, it also has environmental tolerance that other surface treatment processes do not have. In addition, immersion gold can also prevent the dissolution of copper, which will benefit lead-free assembly.

5. Shen Xi

Since all current solders are based on tin, the tin layer can be matched with any type of solder. The tin-immersion process can form a flat copper-tin intermetallic compound. This feature makes tin-immersion have the same good solderability as hot-air leveling without the headache flatness problem of hot-air leveling; tin-immersion boards cannot be stored for too long, The assembly must be carried out according to the order of sinking tin.

6. Immersion Silver

Immersion silver process is between organic coating and electroless nickel/immersion gold. The process is relatively simple and fast; even if exposed to heat, humidity and pollution, silver can still maintain good solderability, but will lose its luster . Immersion silver does not have the good physical strength of electroless nickel/immersion gold because there is no nickel under the silver layer.

7. Chemical nickel palladium gold

Compared with immersion gold, chemical nickel-palladium-gold has an extra layer of palladium between nickel and gold. Palladium can prevent corrosion caused by substitution reaction and make full preparations for immersion gold. Gold is tightly covered on palladium, providing a good contact surface.

8. Plating hard gold

In order to improve the wear resistance of the product, increase the number of insertion and removal and electroplating of hard gold.

The most basic purpose of PCB surface treatment is to ensure good solderability or electrical properties. Only by ensuring the quality of PCB can PCB manufacturers have a long way to go.