Scientists in a Advanced Materials and Nanosystems directorate during a Lockheed Martin Space Systems Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Palo Alto have grown a insubordinate nanotechnology copper-based electrical interconnect material, or solder, that can be processed around 200 °C. Once entirely optimized, a CuantumFuse™ solder element is approaching to furnish joints with adult to 10 times a electrical and thermal conductivity compared to tin-based materials now in use. Applications in troops and blurb systems are now underneath consideration.
“We are enormously vehement about a CuantumFuse™ breakthrough, and are really gratified with a swell we’re creation to move it to full maturity,” pronounced Dr. Kenneth Washington, clamp boss of a ATC. “We honour ourselves on providing innovations like CuantumFuse™ for space and invulnerability applications, though in this box we are vehement about a huge intensity of CuantumFuse™ in invulnerability and blurb production applications.”
In a past, scarcely all solders contained lead, though there is now an obligatory need for lead-free solder since of a worldwide bid to proviso out dangerous materials in electronics. The European Union implemented lead-free solder in 2006. The State of California did so on January 1, 2007, followed shortly afterward by New Jersey and New York City.
The principal lead-free deputy – a mixed of tin, china and copper (Sn/Ag/Cu) – has proven excusable to a consumer wiring attention that deals mostly with brief product life cycles and comparatively soft handling environments. However, mixed issues have arisen: high estimate temperatures expostulate aloft cost, a high tin calm can lead to tin whiskers that can means brief circuits, and fractures are common in severe environments, creation it formidable to quantify reliability. These trustworthiness concerns are quite strident in systems for a military, aerospace, medical, oil and gas, and automotive industries. In such applications, prolonged use life and robustness of components are critical, where vibration, shock, thermal cycling, humidity, and impassioned heat use can be common.
“To residence these concerns, we satisfied a essentially new proceed was indispensable to solve a lead-free solder challenge,” pronounced Dr. Alfred Zinn, materials scientist during a ATC and contriver of CuantumFuse™ solder. “Rather than anticipating another multi-component alloy, a organisation devised a resolution formed on a obvious melting indicate basin of materials in nanoparticle form. Given this nanoscale phenomenon, we’ve constructed a solder pulp formed on pristine copper.”
A series of mandate were addressed in a expansion of a CuantumFuse™ solder pulp including, though not singular to: 1) amply tiny nanoparticle size, 2) a reasonable distance distribution, 3) greeting scalability, 4) low cost synthesis, 5) burning and expansion insurgency during ambient conditions, and 6) strong molecule alloy when subjected to towering temperature. Copper was selected since it is already used via a wiring attention as a trace, interconnect, and pad material, minimizing harmony issues. It is inexpensive (1/4th a cost of tin; 1/100th a cost of silver, and 1/10,000th that of gold), abundant, and has 10 times a electrical and thermal conductivity compared to blurb tin-based solder.
The ATC has demonstrated CuantumFuse™ with a public of a tiny exam camera board. “These accomplishments are intensely sparkling and promising, though we still have to solve a series of technical hurdles before CuantumFuse™ will be prepared for slight use in troops and blurb applications,” pronounced Mike Beck, executive of a Advanced Materials and Nanosystems organisation during a ATC. “Solving these challenges, such as improving bond strength, is a concentration on a group’s ongoing investigate and development.”
The ATC is a investigate and expansion classification of Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company (LMSSC) and is intent in a research, development, and transition of technologies in phenomenology sensors, optics electro-optics, laser radar, RF photonics, superintendence navigation, space scholarship instrumentation, modernized materials nanosystems, thermal sciences cryogenics, and modeling, make-believe information science.
LMSSC, a vital handling section of Lockheed Martin Corporation, designs and develops, tests, manufactures and operates a full spectrum of advanced-technology systems for inhabitant confidence and military, polite supervision and blurb customers. Chief products embody tellurian space moody systems; a full operation of remote sensing, navigation, meteorological and communications satellites and instruments; space observatories and interplanetary spacecraft; laser radar; ballistic missiles; barb invulnerability systems; and nanotechnology investigate and development.
Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) is a tellurian security and aerospace company that employs about 120,000 people worldwide and is predominantly intent in a research, design, development, manufacture, formation and sustainment of modernized record systems, products and services. The corporation’s net sales for 2011 were $46.5 billion.
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