Ingemer, Actually, I was referring to the article in the January 2001 issue by Mike Walsh (Electroless Nickel, Immersion Gold, Black Pad). It shows comparisons between modified general metal finishing baths and a bath formulated for PCB's. Rather than put his findings into my own words I'd recommend reading it. Mark At 12:51 PM 1/23/01 +0100, you wrote: >Guys, I begin to feel schizo, >one says this and another that, and me being slow thinker, not easy. Mark >you said this: "The cause of the black pad phenomenon has been found and fixed, > and it has nothing to do with phosphorous!" And you refer to > CircuiTree's article by George M. But he pointed that phosphorous was one > of mayor concerns, didn't he?: " Major factor Effects on black pad > formation are The Structure of Nickel deposit, The Phosphorous Content of > the Nickel deposit, The Uniformity of the Nickel and Gold Coatings and > finally The Corrosion Rate of the Immersion Gold." > >Another one, not Mark, but all of you: Lucent's people have led us back to >the central issue, the dark, thin, brittle and elusive shadow, I mean the >extremly thin layer between ordinary Ni3Sn4 and the Nickel on the lands. I >have asked a lot of people about their experience of compund findings, but >no respons yet. What tool do you recommend for examination the layer? EDS? >FTIR? XPS? SIMS? or what? Cross sectioning with polishing seems to smear >and mislead. Suppose that the BGA falls of, caused by this layer, then you >must have the content of the thin layer on one or two parts, either on the >BGA balls or on the board lands. If you have these parts in your hand, >what would you do then to find out what the brittle P-rich layer is? In my >reporting I need add who was the murderer. > >Sorry for harping this matter over and over again. > >Ingemar --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send the following message: SET Technet NOMAIL Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------