The Electronics Source Book
December 1, 2004

IDT: 99 percent lead free already

With 19 months and counting until the European Union RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) regulations go into affect on July 1, 2006, the electronics industry is justifiably getting a little nervous about whether its suppliers are going to be ready with green parts. On the July 2006 witching hour, components will have to be free of six hazardous materials including lead and mercury. Some suppliers see the impending deadline as a competitive opportunity. The more ready you are, the quicker you get the sale.

Integrated Device Technology Inc. (IDT) of Santa Clara got a jump on lead free. The company declared last month that 99 percent of its 12,000 available devices are now lead free and packaged in fully green materials. According to IDT representatives, the company started developing lead-free components a few years ago. “About three years ago we started an initiative to move our products to lead free by now,” says Anne Katz, IDT’s VP of worldwide assembly and text operations.

Katz notes that IDT’s commitment to going green early was prompted by its customer base. “We surveyed our customers back in 2000, and they said they wanted a big change in our product. They wanted us to go green,” explains Katz. “So that’s when we started our initiative.”

IDT’s lead-free details

Since it began the initiative, IDT’s green program have accomplished the following:

· Qualified packages to the current Joint Electronic Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) moisture level classification at 260 degrees C reflow.

· Qualified a lead-free plating process and lead-free solder balls that are consistent between assembly subcontractors and internal assembly.

· IDT lead-free products are fully green – which is a step above the European Union’s RoHS legislation – (except for flip-chip products)

· Offers both standard (non-green) and green products until customers are fully converted.

· All lead-free orders will be filled with green products except for flip-chip products, which will be filled with RoHS compliant products.

· Green products are available in volume production quantities and can be ordered by the respective green part number.

In addition to offering lead-free parts, IDT will continue to offer leaded versions of its parts to the military and portions of the telecommunications market which are exempted from the RoHS regulations. Certain portions of the telecommunications industry will not have to be compliant until 2010 and there is no current plan for the military to convert to lead-free components.

One of the reasons electronic components have carried hazardous materials all these decades is because those materials work very well in the parts. When switching away from lead IDT knew it had to make sure the green components were not substandard. “We knew our customers were going to expect the same performance from our green parts as they expect from our leaded parts,” says Katz. “That’s one of the reasons it took us three years to get where 99 percent of our parts are green. We did a lot of work to get our product to withstand the higher temperature. It was really material development work – we had to look at everything in the component.”

Another challenge suppliers are facing as they move to green components is part numbering. A recent survey by Avnet and Technology Forecasters that we reported on in the last issue of ESB’s Bi-Weekly News shows that 42 percent of suppliers don’t plan to assign new part numbers as they RoHS-compliant parts. Instead they plan to mark their new parts by lot number or date, indicating lead-free versions.

This has caused consternation in the electronics industry. Both distributors and manufacturers are concerned that when components come back as returns it will be difficult to ascertain whether the component is leaded or lead-free unless the lead-free version carries a unique part number.

IDT has solved this problem by going to entirely new part numbers for the lead-free versions of their components. “We have added new part numbers for our green products,” says Katz. “The decision was made as a customer service move, but it’s also for selfish reasons.” Since IDT will serve both leaded and lead-free versions of the same components until the RoHS deadline, the company needed unique part numbers to keep the components straight. “Inventory control would be a nightmare without unique numbers,” says Katz.

This is the Part III in a series of articles.

Part I: Industry braces for the lead-free conversion

Part II: Progress on lead-free components spotty

Part III: IDT: 99 percent lead free already

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