SURFACE MOUNT TECHNOLOGY

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Definition

Surface-mount technology (SMT) is a method for producing electronic circuits in which the
components are mounted or placed directly onto the surface of printed circuit boards (PCBs). An
electronic device so made is called a surface-mount device (SMD). In industry, it has largely replaced
the through-hole technology construction method of fitting components with wire leads into holes in
the circuit board. Both technologies can be used on the same board, with the through-hole technology
used for components not suitable for surface mounting such as large transformers and heat-sinked
power semiconductors.

By employing SMT, the production process speeds up, but the risk of defects also increases due to
component miniaturization and to the denser packing of boards. In those conditions, detection of
failures has become critical for any SMT manufacturing process.

An SMT component is usually smaller than its through-hole counterpart because it has either smaller
leads or no leads at all. It may have short pins or leads of various styles, flat contacts, a matrix
of solder balls (BGAs), or terminations on the body of the component.

1.2 History:

During the 1970s and 1980s the level of automation started to rise for PCB assembly for boards used
in a variety of equipment. The use of traditional components with leads did not prove easy for PCB
assembly. Resistors and capacitors needed to have their leads pre-formed so that they would fit
through holes, and even integrated circuits needed to have their leads set to exactly the right pitch so
that they could be placed through the holes easily.

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This approach always proved difficult as leads often missed the holes as tolerances required to ensure
they fitted exactly through the holes were very tight. As a result operator intervention was frequently
required to resolve the issues of components not fitting properly and stopping the machines. This
slowed down the PCB assembly process and considerably increased costs.

For PCB assembly there is actually no need for the component leads to pass through the board. Instead
it is quite adequate for components to be soldered directly to the board. As a result, surface mount
technology, SMT was born, and the use of SMT components rose very rapidly as their advantages
were seen and realized.

1.3 Types of Surface Mounting in SMT

Surface mount components, active and passive, when attached to the SMT PCB, form three major
types of SMT assembly – commonly referred to as Type I, Type II and Type III. The process
sequences are different in each type, and all the three types need different equipment.

Type I SMT

This type of assembly contains only surface mount components. The assembly can be either single-
sided PCB or double-sided PCB.

Type II SMT

This assembly is a combination of Type III and Type I. It generally does not contain any active
surface mount devices on the bottom side but may contain discrete surface mount devices on the
bottom side.

Type III SMT

This Type of assembly contains only discrete surface mount components (SMD Resistors, SMD
capacitors, and transistors) glued to the bottom side.

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2. SMT DEVICES

Surface mount components are different to their leaded counterparts. Rather than being designed to
wire between two points, SMT components are designed to be set down on a board and soldered to
it.

Their leads to not go through holes in the board as might be expected for a traditional leaded
component. There are different styles of package for different types of component. Broadly the
package styles can be fitted into three categories: passive components, transistors and diodes, and
integrated circuits and these three categories of SMT components are viewed below.

Passive SMDs:

There is quite a variety of different packages used for passive SMDs. However, the majority of
passive SMDs are either SMT resistors or SMT capacitors for which the package sizes are reasonably
well standardised. Other components including coils, crystals and others tend to have more individual
requirements and hence their own packages. Resistors and capacitors have a variety of package sizes.

These have designations that include: 1812, 1206, 0805, 0603, 0402, and 0201. The figures refer to
the dimensions in hundreds of an inch. In other words the 1206 measures 12 x 6 hundredths of an
inch. The larger sizes such as 1812 and 1206 were some of the first that were used. They are not in
widespread use now as much smaller components are generally required.
The connections to the printed circuit board are made through metallised areas at either end of the
package.

Transistors and diodes:

SMT transistors and SMT diodes are often contained in a small plastic package. The connections are
made via leads which emanate from the package and are bent so that they touch the board. Three
leads are always used for these packages. In this way it is easy to identify which way round the device
must go.

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Integrated circuits:

There is a variety of packages which are used for integrated circuits. The package used depends
upon the level of interconnectivity required. Many chips like the simple logic chips may only
require 14 or 16 pins, whereas other like the VLSI processors and associated chips can require up to
200 or more. In view of the wide variation of requirements there is a number of different packages
available.

For the smaller chips, packages such as the SOIC (Small Outline Integrated Circuit) may be used.
These are effectively the SMT version of the familiar DIL (Dual In Line) packages used for the
familiar 74 series logic chips. Additionally there are smaller versions including TSOP (Thin Small
Outline Package) and SSOP (Shrink Small Outline Package).

The VLSI chips require a different approach. Typically, a package known as a quad flat pack is
used. This has a square or rectangular footprint and has pins emanating on all four sides. Pins again
are bent out of the package in what is termed a gull-wing formation so that they meet the board.
The spacing of the pins is dependent upon the number of pins required. For some chips it may be as
close as 20 thousandths of an inch. Great care is required when packaging these chips and handling
them as the pins are very easily bent.

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3. PROCESS INVOLVED IN SMT

There are five steps involved in Surface mount technology

i. Surface Mount Design

ii. Solder Paste Application
iii. Component Placement
iv. Soldering
v. Cleaning
vi. Repair/Rework

3.1 Surface Mount design

The main reason for the move to surface mount technology was the great improvement in terms of
speed, reliability and cost for the PCB assembly process. Whilst this is the major impact for the
adoption of the technology, it also impacts the design and d areevelopment of new electronic circuits
and equipment. Fortunately, this transfer brings more advantages to development and circuit
performance, than disadvantages.

For the development engineer, the use of surface mount technology offers many advantages, although
there are some points to watch:

Low spurious capacitance and inductance:

In view of the small size of the components, the levels of spurious inductance and capacitance are
much smaller - SMT resistors function in a way that is closer to the perfect resistor than that of a
leaded resistor. Similarly an SMT capacitor will exhibit much lower parasitic inductance. As a result
faster speeds and higher frequencies are possible with standard SMT components than would be
possible with leaded equivalents.
Lower power ratings: The power rating of surface mount components is of great importance. The
surface mount resistor is the particular example. A standard leaded resistor can dissipate at least 0.25
watts. For surface mount resistors, bing much smaller, the dissipation is also less. Be aware of this
and check the manufacturers data.

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Smaller / more dense circuits: As the drive for more functionality within ever smaller volumes is
a common trend across the electronics industry, surface mount technology helps in a major way in
allowing for miniaturisation. The components can be made much smaller and additionally they can
be mounted on the printed circuit board far closer together than would be possible with traditional
leaded components. Combined with the greater level of functionality now obtainable within
integrated circuits, this means that the task of the development engineer is made possible.
Although there are a few additional precautions to observe when using surface mount technology in
a new design, most elements of the design remain very much the same, although the designs tend to
be much more complicated and provide much more functionality. In this way the introduction and
use of surface mount technology has facilitated the development of electronics, allowing much
greater levels of complexity and providing more capability.

3.2 Solder Paste Application

Solder paste is applied to surface mount boards prior to pick and place and when passed through an
infra-red reflow machine, melts to provide the soldered joints. Solder paste is the form of solder that
is used in association with infrared reflow machines during the PCB assembly process.

Solder paste is used in PCB assembly as it provides significant advantages and its form enables the
process to become a simple and easy process. It can be sued within large scale PCB assembly, or
even within prototype production. In fact it is used in most forms of SMT assembly, proving an easy
to use medium for the solder.

Solder can also be categorised according to the type of flux used:

Rosin based solder pastes:

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Rosin based pastes are made of rosin, a natural extract from pine trees. These fluxes can be cleaned
if required after the soldering process using a solvent (potentially including chlorofluorocarbons).
Water soluble flux based solder pastes :
Water-soluble fluxes are made up of organic materials and glycol bases. There is a wide variety of
cleaning agents for these fluxes.

No clean solder paste:

A no-clean flux is made with resins and various levels of solid residues. No-clean pastes save not
only cleaning costs, but also capital expenditures and floor space. Although the no-clean flux based
solder pastes sound attractive, they need a very clean assembly environment and may need an inert
reflow environment.

3.3 Component Placement

Surface mount components are placed on a printed circuit board after deposition of adhesive or solder
paste. Generally, the adhesive deposition is done at the placement equipment itself. Thus the main
function of most placement equipment is adhesive deposition, and of course component placement.
Placement equipment is commonly referred to as “pick-and-place” equipment. The components can
be placed on the board by

1. Manual placement

2. Automatic placement

Manual placement of parts

Manual placement of surface mount components is not reliable and can be used only for prototyping
applications. In component placement, there are two main functions, pickup and placement. In
manual placement, the components parts are picked up either by tweezers or by a vacuum pipette.

The following are the benefits of using manual placement machines

1. Very low capital cost

2. Ideal for prototype development due to low turnaround time and low cost

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3. For low volume production manual pick and place machines with vacuum pickup and placement
are preferred.

Automatic placement of parts

Automatic placement machines are required for high volume production as the manual method turn
out to be very slow. It is also possible to achieve consistent quality levels with automatic placement
equipment. Vision capability is required for placement of fine-pitch components and it may add to
the overall cost of the equipment. The following are the important parameters while selecting an
automatic placement machine.

1. Placement speed, i.e. the number of components that the machine should be able to place per
minute

2. Requirement of placement of fine pitch or very fine pitch components

3. The variety of components that the machine should handle 4. Types of feeders that the machine
should support

5. Other features like CAD data downloading for reduction in programming time

6. Ability to dispense adhesive

7. Need for component testing

3.4 Soldering

Like the selection of auto-placement machines, the type of soldering process required depends upon
the type of components to be soldered and whether surface mount and through-hole parts will be
combined. For example, if all components are surface mount types, the reflow method will be used.
However, for a combination of through-hole and surface mount components, reflow soldering for
surface mount components followed by wave soldering for through-hole mount components is
optimum.

3.4.1 Infrared/Convective Reflow Soldering

There are basically two types of infrared reflow processes: focused (radiant) and non-focused

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(convective). Focused IR, also known as Lamp IR, uses quartz lamps that produce radiant energy to
heat the product. In non- focused or diffused IR, the heat energy is transferred from heaters by
convection. A gradual heating of the assembly is necessary to drive off volatiles from the solder paste.
This is accomplished by various top and bottom heating zones that are independently controlled.
After an appropriate time in preheat, the assembly is raised to the reflow temperature for soldering
and then cooled.
The most widely accepted reflow is now "forced convection" reflow. It is considered more suitable
for SMT packages and has become the industry standard. The advantage of forced convection reflow
is better heat transfer from hot air that is constantly being replenished in large volume thus supplying
more consistent heating. While large mass devices on the PB will heat more slowly than low mass
devices, the deltas are small allowing all parts to see nearly the same heat cycle.

3.4.2 Hot Bar Reflow Soldering

The ability to place and reflow high lead count ultra fine pitch components challenges traditional
stencil, place and reflow processes at or below 0.4mm lead pitch. Pulsed resistance thermode
attachment or "hot bar" reflow is an outer lead bonding technique for component lead pitches down
to 0.2mm. The package for this process is the Tape Carrier Package (TCP).

Component input into the placement system can be accomplished through many different format
types: molded carrier ring, singulated slide carriers, or matrix trays. In this process, no solder paste
is used. Only the solder plated on the PB lands form the solder joints. Hence, a PB vendor with tight
solder plating control is needed. First, liquid flux is applied to the lands at the mounting site. No-
clean "low solids" fluxes that can withstand the higher temperature of the thermodes (approximately
260oC – 300oC) without carbonizing are recommended for this application. An advanced machine
vision system is used to perform component lead inspection, board fiducial location and calculate
placement location. After component placement, the hot bar blades are brought down to "gang bond"
all the leads simultaneously. The blades physically contact the top of the component leads, holding
them in place during reflow and cool down. This hold down process results in fewer problems due to
coplanarity.

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3.4.3 Cleaning
In general, cleaning of SMT assemblies is harder than that of conventional assemblies because of
smaller gaps between surface mount components and the PB surface. The smaller gap can entrap
flux, which can cause corrosion, which leads to reliability problems. Thus, the cleaning process
depends upon the spacing between component leads, spacing between component and substrate, the
source of flux residue, type of flux, and the soldering process. RMA cleaning requires chemicals and
has waste affuents to deal with. OA cleaning uses water that must flush down the drain. However in
this chemistry, lead is often found in the wastewater and creates an environmental concern. No clean
is generally becoming the preferred solder process since it eliminates cleaning all together. This
eliminates the environmental issues and saves in capital costs.
One of the key issues in SMT has been to determine the cleanliness of SMT assemblies. The Omega
meter is a common tool originally used for DIP boards. For SMT, the industry also uses Surface
Insulation Resistance (SIR) surface mount boards. These boards check for ionic contaminates left on
the PB by measuring the electrical resistance between adjacent traces or circuits.

3.4.4 Repair/Rework
Repair and rework of SMT assemblies is easier than that of conventional components. A number of
tools are available for removing components, including hot-air machines for removing active surface
mount components. As with any rework tool, a key issue in using hot-air machines is preventing
thermal damage to the component or adjacent components.

No matter which tool is used, all the controlling desoldering/soldering variables should be studied,
including the number of times a component can be removed and replaced, and desoldering
temperature and time. It is also helpful to preheat the board assembly to 150oF – 200oF for 15 to 20
minutes before rework to prevent thermal damage such as white spots of the boards, and to avoid
pressure on pads during the rework operation.

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4. APPLICATIONS OF SURFACE MOUNT TECHNOLOGY

Although it is possible to use some SMT components for home construction, great care is required
when soldering them. Additionally, even the ICs having a wide pin spacing may be difficult to
solder.
Those with fifty or more pins cannot be soldered without special equipment. They are intended
only for large scale manufacturing. Even when working on boards that have already been built
great care is needed. However, these SMT components offer great cost savings to manufacturers
and this is why they have been adopted. Fortunately for the home constructor, traditional leaded
components that can be soldered manually are still widely available and offer a much better
solution for home construction.
Nevertheless, SMT components can be used for some home projects where they are applicable -
where the SMT component leads and connections are not too small to manage with more
traditional soldering irons and other tools.
 Used to obtain highly accurate and compact circuit boards
 Used in power amplifier design and modern communication systems
 Backlighting of legends and LCDs

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5. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF SMT

5.1 Advantages of SMT in design

 The most important benefits in Design section are significant savings in weight and real
estate and electrical noise reduction.
 The SMT component can weigh as little as one-tenth of their common thru-hole
equivalents. Because of this reason significant decrease in weight of the Surface Mount
Assembly (SMA).
 SMT components occupy small because of this only one-half to one-third of the space on
the printed circuit board.
 Since every electronic part are not accessible in surface mount, the real area reserves on a
board will depend on the ratio of through-hole components changed by surface mount
parts.

5.2 Benefits of SMT in manufacturing

There are major benefits provide also in manufacturing section.

 The important advantage of SMT in manufacturing includes reduced board cost, reduced
material handling costs, and a controlled manufacturing process.
 Routing of traces is reduced, the size of the board is reduced, and number of drilled holes
are also reduced.
 If the functions on the surface mount board are not expanded, the expanded between inter-
package spacings made possible by littler surface mount parts and a decrease in the
quantity of bored gaps may likewise reduce the quantity of layer counts in the printed
circuit board. This will again bring down the board cost.
The above benefits of Surface Mount Technology don’t necessarily means that SMT assembly
will always cost less. It depends when and how SMT is used.

5.2 Disadvantages of SMT

 The small lead spaces can make repairs more difficult.

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 It cannot assurance that the solder connections will withstand the compounds used during
potting application. The connections may or may not be damaged when going through
thermal cycling.
 Components that generate a lot of heat or bear a high electrical load cannot be mounted
using SMT because the solder can melt under high heat.
 The solder can also be weakened due to mechanical stress. This means components that
will be directly interacting with a user should be attached using the physical binding of
through-hole mounting.

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6 FUTURE SCOPE OF SMT

Every year brings a new crop of digital electronic devices with greater capabilities. There’s a
rule-of-thumb called Moore’s Law that says the number of transistors in an integrated circuit
will double every 18 months while the cost to produce it remains the same. It wasn’t long ago
that a personal digital assistant with an 8 megabyte memory was a hot ticket device, yet today
having gigabytes of memory is commonplace.

6.1 Miniaturization of SMT

Miniaturization was crucial during the space race of the mid-twentieth century. The Soviets
possessed more powerful rockets. In order to equal their capabilities, the payloads of American
rockets had to be smaller and lighter. As miniaturization increased the density of integrated
circuit chips, component density increased on circuit boards. Surface mount components are
soldered using automated techniques so there’s no need to maintain generous spacing between
them. Technicians have little room for error when performing rework, reflowing solder joints,
or replacing components. The space between component leads may be less than 0.010 inches
or 0.254 millimeters. The tiny pads on the circuit boards are easily overheated and pulled up
even with good soldering technique.

6.2 New Surface Mount Technology

Newer technologies will allow for even greater component density. Right now, most boards
have densities in the 10-20% range, but the increasing use of flip chip connections inside
integrated circuits will permit density to climb to about 80%. Integrated circuits have tiny
internal wires connecting the active devices to larger external leads, but in flip chip technology,
the active device is mounted upside down. This allows the use of the bottom of the chip for
connections to the circuit board. A modern flash memory chip may have nearly 100 leads, but
a similar size flip chip can have over 1000. These connections are called ball grid arrays (BGA)
because there are tiny bumps of solder on the underside of the IC. When heated in an oven or
under a hot air soldering station, the balls melt to form electrical connections.

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6.3 Transistors in SMT

The most common transistors found in ICs are MOSFETS which measure from 50-100 nm.
Carbon nanotubes, which can be metals or semiconductors depending on their composition,
are 2 nm across. CNTFETs could make even greater circuit densities possible, and some of
their other properties, like higher currents and lower losses – offer tremendous promise.

6.4 Environmental concerns for SMT

Environmental concerns are another key consideration in manufacturing as lead solder is

slowly phased out. Conductive adhesives may be a substitute as are lead-free solders, but the
long term reliability of these materials is not yet known. For some critical applications in
medicine, the military, or aerospace, conventional lead solder may be a better choice for now,
but conductive adhesives may be the future when it comes to flip chip technology.

6.5 Circuit boards with Surface Mount Technology

Circuit boards can be manufactured with layers containing passive components like resistors,
capacitors, and inductors. Other layers can contain optical circuits for fiber optics, microwave
and RF circuits, and even the power supply. Current multi-layer board technology could make
this possible very quickly, and is one key aspect of increasing component density. As a result,
the differences between components and circuit board may become blurred in future
technology.

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7. CONCLUSION

At last we conclude that this technology will be very useful & effective in the fabrication of
electronic circuits on PCB. Through hole component technique has been replaced by SMT, with
higher I/O capacity, and high efficiency. Weight, size and volume reduced. Surface mounting lends
itself well to a high degree of automation, reducing labor cost and greatly increasing production
rates. SMDs can be one-quarter to one-tenth the size and weight, and one-half to one-quarter the
cost of equivalent through-hole parts.
Gadget users always have a constant set of demands, sleeker products, and faster operations. In
the electronics industry, SMT has largely replaced the through hole technology construction
method of fitting components. Because an SMT component is usually smaller than its through-
hole counterpart. It has either smaller leads or no leads at all.
Surface Mount Technology is very instrumental and useful in the fabrication of electronic circuits
on the Printed Circuit Board [PCB]. With this design, it facilitates the production of better and
easy to manufacture devices. SMDs are among the world's most commonly used devices ranging
from new generations of computers to phones and air conditioning devices, to name a few.
Therefore, we can conclude that surface mount technology is way more efficient and advanced
than any technology ever before, while it is absolutely compact. We do not drill a lot of holes into
the board. This leads to faster and more automated assembly processes.

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REFERENCES

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-mount_technology
 https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/electronic_components/surface-mount-technology-
smd-smt/what-is-smt-primer-tutorial.php
 http://www.surfacemountprocess.com/
 https://www.lectronics.net/manufacturing/surface-mount-technology/
 https://www.eurocircuits.com/smd-surface-mount-device/
 https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/packaging-
databooks/packaging-chapter-07-databook.pdf

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