Bromine Free PWBs

Doug Pauls has a bachelors in Chemistry & Physics, Carthage College, BSEE, Univ of Wisc Madison. He has 9 years working experience for US Navy - Materials Lab, Naval Avionics Center Indianapolis. 8 years Technical Director, Contamination Studies Laboratories. 11 years Rockwell Collins Advanced Operations Engineering.

Mr. Greenland has 20 years electronics industry experience ranging from circuit board design to product support & repair services. Peter has spent the last 4 years at Pycon Inc. supporting customers that require high mix, low volume manufacturing solutions.

Mr. Smith has been supporting customers in the electronics assembly industry since 1994. His expertise is focused on solder paste printing and reducing soldering defects. He holds a BS in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Marketing. He has authored several papers in trade magazines and at industry conferences. He is an SMTA Certified Process Engineer.

John has focused on Product Compliance and Environmental & Safety issues throughout his career. He has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering, an M.S. in Chemical Oceanography, an M.S. in Environmental Engineering, and is a Professional Engineer in the fields of Chemical and Environmental Engineering.

Lee Levine has been a Process Engineer and Metallurgist in the semiconductor industry for 30 years. He now operates his own company Process Solutions Consulting Inc where he consults on process issues and provides SEM/EDS and metallography services.

Mark Frimann has been working in electronic industry regulations and standards on chemical and material restrictions, and how this is dealt with in the supply chain, and addressing on-going issues as these requirements change and become further defined.

Fern Abrams is the Director of Government Relations and Environmental Policy for IPC. She is responsible for advocating member positions in the areas of environment, health and safety, tax, trade, intellectual property and other regulatory issues. Current activities focus on conflict minerals regulations; implementation of best practices for protecting intellectual property, research and development tax credits, international materials restrictions, hazardous waste, and environmental reporting and record keeping.

An electronic product has an entire lifecycle that includes end of life disposal. The RoHS directive in the EU was a sister directive to a waste disposal directive for this reason. To make the end of life phase less harmful it was deemed necessary to restrict heavy metals, and certain bromines, which in acid conditions (such as unlined landfill site or uncontrolled disposal) it was feared the heavy metals can contaminate groundwater (especially due to disposal in unlined or unmanaged landfill sites acid conditions causing heavy metal to leach out).

The bromines also convert to hazardous by products (ironically for flame retardant) when the waste product is incinerated (it used to be common to grind circuit boards and incinerate for energy recovery). The limitations imposed by laws (lead and certain specific bromines / halides) and industry limits (low halogen standards) are therefore primarily due to risks relating to the end of life disposal phase of a product lifecycle.

Substances required to be restricted may make recycling more hazardous for workers, but mainly they may enter ecological systems due to inappropriate disposal methods and cause harm once the chemicals break down and enter water, air, soils / food chains, etc. This has been scientifically studied and reported by official bodies as well as by NGOs. See also (UK) Institute of Physics article on the subject of e-waste and their conclusion recommends using safer materials in the products https://www.iop.org/news/11/may/page_51103.html

The idea that any chemicals are free from heath hazards is erroneous. Even too much water can cause harm.

The major change in the EU was the introduction of Reach where the target is to register all chemicals and put the onus on the manufacturer to prove that they are safe with biology.

The term hazardous tends to refer to a more immediate hazard, rather than the less well studies harm to reproduction, cancer or other sensitive membranes. You need to be very careful assuming that any chemical does no harm. The position on each chemical is changing on a regular basis.

What Halogen Free is or is not is well covered by the experts so far. Missing in the discussion is the impact of Halogen Free on signal integrity. HF materials tend to have higher Dk or dielectric constant which may have a negative impact on your impedance.

This is especially true if you have limited space for routing. DF or loss values tend to benefit from halogen replacements.