Printed Circuit Board Failure Analysis

Whether measuring plating thickness, cross sectioning vias, identifying foreign materials or finding defects in the board, IAL has the expertise and equipment to isolate the cause of failure.

Today’s Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) have evolved from 100% through-hole, 100-mil technology to a mixture of through-hole and surface mount processes involving thousands of components and precision to 1-mil tolerances (5-mil spacings).

Double-sided boards have evolved into multi-layer boards where 5 and 6 layers are now very common as many as 14 layers have been used.

As the complexity of the PCB manufacturing process has increased, the possibility of process defects has also increased. A PCB has many potential causes of failure:

These are traditional types of PCB defects that must be addressed on a daily basis. To complicate the situation further, it is now very common to have Chip-on-Board (COB), the direct mounting and wiring of an integrated circuit on the PCB. Flip chips and Ball Grid Array packages may be on the PCB as well.

These technologies, while providing a very dense board layout, also pose new challenges to the board manufacturer: tighter tolerances, more fragile die, underfill, and solder contacts that are not visible to the naked eye.

To address these concerns, IAL has assembled equipment to identify the specific problem and the root cause. This equipment and its capabilities are: