Will This Fancy Metallic Glue Kill Soldering?

Megalith

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
Could soldering actually be replaced? Scientists who have developed a new glue seem to think so.

Materials scientists at Northeastern University in Boston are daring to suggest, however, that its days may be numbered. This is thanks to a recent creation dubbed MesoGlue: a "revolutionary joining solution that lets you attach items together with a metal bond, at room temperature." Soldering without the heat, in other words. The new material is described in this month's Advanced Materials and Processes.
 
Lol yeah no.

Soldering doesn't create penetration alloys like indium and gallium do.
 
Before even knowing if it's better, my question is "will it be comparably priced?"
 
Might not replace soldering, but I wonder if it could work as a better TIM under the heat spreader on processors and GPUs like shown in the video and it seems like the metals that for the "nano rods" and the bonding metal can be tailored to suit the intferface.

Might also be useful in display assembly were high temp soldering can damage parts so they are assembled separate from the soldered on parts and placed on separate PCBs.

Even if it just makes it easier to do SMD assembly and not having to use solder masks and pastes , it might be worth it.

Some of the really small pitch SMD parts are really hard to solder and the move to lead free solder has made it hard to get the same quality solder connections with things like BGA chips and in some LEDs.

if this kinda of nano-scale metallic "glue" works better than soldering , it might be good for solar power applications too since they mention bonding differing material like metal and glass.

Even if it just works as a better "thermal paste" it could have a impact since as electronics get smaller, the thermal designs and lack of effective cooling is one of the big reasons parts fail and performance is affected.

Just considering all the OEM laptops and thing like game consoles that have really good designs that are ruined by really bad paste aplications on their HSF assemblies makes me hopeful that if this method does work better, we could see smaller more reliable designs for some products.

Now I guess the important things like cost and environmental impact have to be considered
 
I would worry, as I work for a company who relies completely on soldering...but it takes the government SO long to qualify ANYTHING, it's not a big deal. I'll be doing something else by the time this comes around LOL. They still won't let us use PB Free for anything that goes into a plane/tank/missle or space. And I do mean anything, there are items from the 60's (B-52 components) that are still built with the same parts! Parts from the 70's and 80's! They will NOT approve alternates! It's crazy...and those parts are hard to find.
 
Whoops, italics.

I liked the article as well about the nano-traces for water cooling on CPU's. But yeah, this is definitely something cool, as it could be done at home. I would take 8c on my 8350 any freaking day. As long as it's the last AIO or whatever I plan on using.
 
Too early to tell in real world testing. There's usually some drawback to these innovations which basically kills it before it gets to the market. Like it decays fast over time or water corrodes the glue or the conductivity is too low/resistance too high.
Solder is also very different than welding. Solder is usually low melting temp metal such as lead while wielding is high temperature such as steel, aluminum, nickle, etc.
To make a product that's both conductive and has really high strength is not very probable.
 
Hypergreatthing said:
Too early to tell in real world testing. There's usually some drawback to these innovations which basically kills it before it gets to the market. Like it decays fast over time or water corrodes the glue or the conductivity is too low/resistance too high.
Solder is also very different than welding. Solder is usually low melting temp metal such as lead while wielding is high temperature such as steel, aluminum, nickle, etc.
To make a product that's both conductive and has really high strength is not very probable.
Click to expand...

Soldering is more akin to brazing than welding. This ”glue" also seems to be 2 part a gallium based part a and a indium part b the since that is the case it will be very unfriendly to aluminum...

Current glue is just a high conductive suspension of carbon in a glue.
 
it has to be worth the effort and time to make this a viable product. I'm sure there's a flaw to it that they aren't being open with. There's always a price when you change one material for another. Some advantage for another disadvantage.

You can't have it all. That being said, sometimes the advantages outweigh the disadvantages which is why we have Li-po batteries instead of Ni-CAD ones.
 
Mugato said:
They still won't let us use PB Free for anything that goes into a plane/tank/missle or space.
Click to expand...

Same for lasers. Seems anything that can go major wrong is a big no no. Can't remember if automotive was included in that too.
 
Very interesting and I hope it becomes a viable product to the extent possible.
 
Number of differences.

Takes a lot longer to set.
Difficult to repair.
Not as good a connection.

Its use will be quite limited.
But the 8C lower than thermal grease might be useful as long as it has enough flex to allow for thermal expansion of delicate surfaces like ICs.
 
You'll hate the glue the first second you have to replace a component. Of course nowadays everything is disposed instead of repaired which in itself is a bad development.
 
The concept is interesting , lets see if it actually is adopted and works as good as soldering.
 
I guess Apple will soon cold-solder everything together improve cooling efficiency and make their devices smaller. If it breaks, just replace it, why would you ever need to remove the heat sink. And once it passes QA, just cold-solder the metal case shut, who needs tabs or even seams when we can make everything waterproof? If it breaks just replace it! :rolleyes:
 
soldering is used to do one of two things. metal in line soldering is when you melt the two surfaces together. spot* (not the right term) welding is eletrical current that goes through two piece metal at point and the eletrical current melts them together. tig weilding etc... then you have chemical epoxs which use normal chemical reactions to bond the surfaces together... the thing they all have in common is waste heat.

So someone has found a way around the waste heat that is really cool... or they just got it down enough in same spaces that it is safer for less pentration into the surface. which means calbes will still need to be soldered and eletroncis on all air frames that take off or land will still need to fuse to a certain depth or they will simply tear from the fused layer. really does sound like a thermal material not weild. but that makes it bonding agent or epoxy not weilding...
 
Rework anyone? I didn't watch the video, but is there anything about how to remove it when something fails?
 
Yes as mentioned it could be really good for making more reliable or perhaps more 'manufacturable' connections to LCDs. Would like to get some of this to test out. As far as replacing soldering, no probably not unless it is a cheaper alternative and at this point, solder is so cheap to produce, it will take a while.
 
spugm1r3 said:
Rework anyone? I didn't watch the video, but is there anything about how to remove it when something fails?
Click to expand...

When was the last time one component was replaced on a PCB for an RMA for anything you sent back to the manufacturer? Funny how hobbies bitch about "rework" but have no clue that it is NEVER done for pretty much everything you buy.

This is how the "real world works".

Broken widget goes back to manufacturer
Figure out what is broken
Replace that board or the whole item
Half ass test it
Send back to owner

now..if the company gets enough failures...they might start caring but the result will be "fix the process" and not "repair the board".
 
Trepidati0n said:
When was the last time one component was replaced on a PCB for an RMA for anything you sent back to the manufacturer? Funny how hobbies bitch about "rework" but have no clue that it is NEVER done for pretty much everything you buy.

This is how the "real world works".

Broken widget goes back to manufacturer
Figure out what is broken
Replace that board or the whole item
Half ass test it
Send back to owner

now..if the company gets enough failures...they might start caring but the result will be "fix the process" and not "repair the board".
Click to expand...

Considering I work in a lab conducting failure analysis at the component level, basically every day. In order to determine if you have a one-off failure caused by environmental factors, or a previously unidentified process-related failure, you have to establish reproducibility, often on the failing system returned from the customer.

Perhaps your sole interaction with the process is as an end-customer, which can leave you a little disillusioned. Keep in mind, however, OEMs are customers too, of the providers of all those little components. Believe me, once the OEM determines it wasn't their fault, they send the problem on to their suppliers.

Hobbyists can, on occasion, echo industry concerns as well.
 
Trepidati0n said:
When was the last time one component was replaced on a PCB for an RMA for anything you sent back to the manufacturer? Funny how hobbies bitch about "rework" but have no clue that it is NEVER done for pretty much everything you buy.

This is how the "real world works".

Broken widget goes back to manufacturer
Figure out what is broken
Replace that board or the whole item
Half ass test it
Send back to owner

now..if the company gets enough failures...they might start caring but the result will be "fix the process" and not "repair the board".
Click to expand...

Erm, we replace components constantly, almost every RMA to us is a component failure of some kind. Our PCBA's though cost hundred's or thousand's of dollars though, but we build a lot of them.
 
Trepidati0n said:
When was the last time one component was replaced on a PCB for an RMA for anything you sent back to the manufacturer? Funny how hobbies bitch about "rework" but have no clue that it is NEVER done for pretty much everything you buy.

This is how the "real world works".

Broken widget goes back to manufacturer
Figure out what is broken
Replace that board or the whole item
Half ass test it
Send back to owner

now..if the company gets enough failures...they might start caring but the result will be "fix the process" and not "repair the board".
Click to expand...


exactly.

Even more so the reason why a "rework" or reflow would work to fix a bad solder connection is that initially it didn't flow properly during assembly because the heat was wrong or the environmental conditions during soldering were compromised.

almost any time a solder joint fails is the parts got too hot or the solder didn't get hot enough because you were trying to avoid getting the parts too hot.

granted , you might not be using this method to "solder" on electrolytic capacitor and through hole construction components so it wouldn't help improve over soldering in those processes but almost all through hole electronics assembly needs to spec that the parts tolerate high temp soldering so they aren't "cooked" during assembly.

This method could make moving more and more parts over to SMD work so we get smaller, cheaper and more reliable components.

Even if it only replaced the solder process for small SMDs in a pick and place assembly setup as suggested in the video as a possibility, it could mean big savings versus the entire solder mask, solder paste, and oven steps.

So many failures happen when you have to heat a component and control the environment precisely just to get the soldering done properly.

If you could eliminate that entire process and simply replace it with a similar procedure to the "pick and place " step you have to do anyway it would change the entire industry for the better....


If it works
 
Mugato said:
I would worry, as I work for a company who relies completely on soldering...but it takes the government SO long to qualify ANYTHING, it's not a big deal. I'll be doing something else by the time this comes around LOL. They still won't let us use PB Free for anything that goes into a plane/tank/missle or space. And I do mean anything, there are items from the 60's (B-52 components) that are still built with the same parts! Parts from the 70's and 80's! They will NOT approve alternates! It's crazy...and those parts are hard to find.
Click to expand...




I suspect this will change soon. My company specs a lot of crossover mil components for our equipment, but we work in the research field. Almost weekly, we are getting our vendors to agree to offer rohs equivalents. They always squawk at first claiming they don't have to. Then they realize that we are buying 10x more products and they reconsider. At some point they will decide it's easier not to support two versions of the same product.
 
Trepidati0n said:
When was the last time one component was replaced on a PCB for an RMA for anything you sent back to the manufacturer? Funny how hobbies bitch about "rework" but have no clue that it is NEVER done for pretty much everything you buy.
Click to expand...

I do my own rework - saves replacing things like amplifiers when a mosfet blows or a cap is bad.

That said, depending on the actual makeup of this and how it bonds to the materials, the glue may be able to be melted for rework. There's not really enough information here to say either way how this interacts with the bound surfaces nor to speculate on whether it will ever see market.
 
But we will need to retrain all the robots from soldering to gluing, the robots will be angry.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top