Prof. David Mark Harvey received the BSc (Hons) and PhD degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Liverpool Polytechnic, Liverpool, UK in 1979 and 1984 respectively. From 1983 to 1984 he was Principal Electronics Design Engineer at Kratos Analytical Instruments, Manchester, UK, and from 1984 to 1985 Principal Electronics Engineer at Plessey Crypto, Liverpool, UK. In 1985 he joined Liverpool Polytechnic, now Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) where he has been a Professor of Electronic Engineering since 2003. He was the Director of two large Technology Transfer projects funded to €10M; The Electronic Design and Manufacturing (EDAM) Centre at LJMU from 1996 to 2001, and The Engineering Development Centre (EDC) at LJMU from 2002 to 2008. All research work has an industrial bias and the graduates produced have entered industry in the electronics sector. Of three recent PhD graduates, one is European validation manager for a large multinational automotive electronics company, one is working in product validation at Intel in Penang, and a third entered Cambridge Silicon Radio (now Qualcomm). In the past he has helped set up two design centres in India at former RECs in Allahabad and Jaipur. His research has been concerned with design and test of electronic instrumentation and optical metrology systems. His recent focus has been on the non-destructive evaluation of manufactured automotive electronics using novel techniques. Professor Harvey is a Fellow of The Institution of Engineering and Technology, UK, and Chartered Engineer, Engineering Council UK.
Abtract of Talk:The ubiquitous nature of electronics in daily life coupled with the Moore’s Law type enhancements in the integrated circuit field now requires serious thinking about how to “green” electronics technology. Packaging, circuit interconnections and size will keep getting smaller but how far can we move to green-up the business? Design for manufacture, test, reliability, EMC and low power are important considerations, but have we considered how to use more environmentally friendly components and at the end-of-life methods to reduce landfill through more efficient recycling. Key to less wastage are more reliable products, and some recent work completed on through-lifetime monitoring of solder interconnections on area array packages will be considered. Lifetime testing of area array packages through both thermal cycling and vibration has started to identify failure mechanisms by imaging the hidden solder balls. Extensive ultrasound scans and some X-ray imaging have helped measure the failure progression from new product to failure. Failure mechanisms in manufactured electronics are often caused by mismatches in the individual coefficients of thermal extension, differences in stiffness/rigidity, and poor component placement. Can new materials be invented at an appropriate cost to better match up the individual design components and reduce failure/stresses for increased lifetime and more reliable products? If these new materials can also be environmentally friendly and easily recyclable then we have gone some way towards green electronics.
An important aspect of measuring hidden solder joints or die is to separate the layers to find the exact position of any fault that may occur during lifetime tests. The research team have designed an image processing toolbox that can separate overlapped layers in ultrasound scans such that a type of “Data Fracking” using complex wavelets can isolate the depth of previously undetectable faults. So, turning a series of 2D horizontal scans into a 3D layered picture.