Hot Solder Dip

High reliability and long life cycle appliations are affected by tin whiskers that can cause electrical shorts over time. Common preventive practices to eliminate this problem such as using nickel barriers, conformal coatings and reflow are not very effective.

The primary way to reduce the risk of tin whisker induced failures is to avoid the use of tin plated components. Unfortunately, many of today's commercial Off-The-Shelf electronic components (COTS) already have tin plated leads. For tin plated components which are to be used in a high reliability and long life cycle applications, Criteria Labs recommends hot solder dipping the component's plated leads using tin-lead solder to completely reflow the tin plating.

Criteria Labs can also take the guess work out of determining whether or not your procured COTS components have the potential for tin whiskers by analyzing lead finish in our reliability lab and then make recommendations