Four isotropically conducting adhesives were used to form lap joints between copper fingers which had been prepared with four surface metallizations (Cu, Au, Pd, and PdNi). A micromechanical tester was used to perform pull and fatigue tests on the 16 adhesive/finish combinations. The micro-ohm resistance change was measured during both the pull and fatigue tests. The similarities and differences between the mechanical strength, fatigue life, and resistance change for the 16 adhesive/finish combinations have been reported, and conclusions were made about relative motion between silver particles, and the fracture interfaces.

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Linguistic qualities are essential for the fitness for use of every standard. The intentions of the standards developers should become perfectly clear to those who will finally use the documents, but language barriers at several project stages may hinder this. This chapter addresses the topic for standards at the global and regional levels using a case study about the linguistic qualities of the standards published by the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission). Most IEC standards are bilingual (English and French), and they are frequently translated into national languages. Feedback on standards use, translation practices, and user satisfaction has been obtained by means of two questionnaires sent to the IEC national committees (NCs). These data are assessed with respect to the language skills of the technical experts concerned, the particular linguistic aspects of the standards, the process of standards development, national translating practices, and standards user satisfaction. Standards development in two languages adds to their fitness for use, but this advantage should be balanced against the cost of bilingualism. The current practice satisfies more or less all parties involved; nevertheless, some improvements can be suggested. The issue of bilingualism vs. unilingualism also has an important cultural and political dimension.

The fatigue and damage of solder joints as well as the potential for interface failure within chip scale packages (CSP) are primarily caused by thermal loading. The thermally induced residual stresses depend on the thermal mismatch encountered during thermal cycle tests (TCT) and, for power cycle tests (PCT), on the gradient of the temperature distribution. In order to characterize and to model the potential for failure TCTs and PCTs were simulated by stationary as well as transient finite element (FE) heat conduction analyses for various CSP geometries and materials selections (PI-flex, organic and ceramic based substrate). The resulting thermal stresses as well as the irreversibly accumulated energy densities were computed with FE on the basis of time-independent plasticity and explicitly time-dependent secondary creep laws. The resulting data was used together with an energy densitybased damage law to perform a lifetime prediction. The outcome of the computer simulations was validated by suitable experiments (e.g., thermal Moire) and an attempt was made to establish a lifetime-reliability ranking chart. IntroductionThe successful and safe development of increasingly miniaturized microelectronic structures, such as BGA or CSP packages, requires a two-fold validation process based on lab experiments computer modeling. Only the combination of both allows to quickly react to the rapid development of

International standards setting organizations have different language selection policies. In this study, the ethnolinguistic background of international standardization is assessed. The language selection policies of regional and of global organizations have, besides their financial aspects, also an important cultural/ political dimension. Language selection concerns both the working language(s) and the language(s) for communicating. The perception of the (then) 65 National Committees (NCs) of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has been investigated by means of a questionnaire. The main findings are: a moderate preference for the use of both English and French for the technical work (standards development and publication), and a strong preference for the use of English only for communication. In the perception of the IEC member countries, an organization with this language policy can still be regarded as truly international. Finally, our conclusions regarding language selection policies are presented.