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Jasen Betts[_2_] Jasen Betts[_2_] is offline
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Default 60/40 vs. 63/37 Solder

On 2010-07-16, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:06:03 -0700, (Dave Platt)
wrote:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solder
This got my attention:
Some alloys, namely of lead and to some degree tin, contain small
but significant amounts of radioisotope impurities. The
radioisotopes undergoing alpha decay are a concern due to their
tendency to cause soft errors. Polonium-210 is especially
problematic; lead-210 beta decays to bismuth-210 which then beta
decays to polonium-210, an intense emitter of alpha particles.
Uranium-238 and thorium-232 are other significant contaminants of
lead containing alloys.
Oh swell.... something else to worry about.


sounds like bull****, alpha particles aren't energetic enough to get
even 1/10 of the way through the encapsulation on a RAM chip.


fraction of the

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