XTRONIC?: Enabler of Improved Performance with Reduced Precious Metal Usage in Microelectronics

摘要

XTRONIC?, a tailored nanocrystalline nickel alloy,has been qualified as a new metal barrier layerreplacing pure nickel in many traditional hard andsoft gold applications. XTRONIC is produced usinga proprietary combination of electroplating chemistryand pulse-reverse applied current waveforms thatenables dynamic control of the deposited material’scomposition and grain structure. The resultingdeposits have been shown to provide superiorperformance in a variety of areas that are critical tomicroelectronics. These improved performancemetrics include resistance to corrosive environments,wear durability, wire bonding, and temperature agingperformance. The novel suites of properties possibleprovide enhanced performance for microelectronics,and can also enable equivalent or improved overallperformance even with significant reductions ofprecious metal use in many applications. Provenareas of application include high-speed backplaneconnectors and multiple printed circuit boardapplications such as dual in-line memory module(DIMM) and flash memory card (FMC) applications.In the current paper we focus on properties forprinted circuit board applications.