OSU lab helps company check components' safety
By Jim Stafford
The Oklahoman
6/20/06
STILLWATER - Tin grows "whiskers," and that's a big problem for Frontier Electronic Systems.
The Stillwater-based company builds electronic components that are used in military and aerospace work, which must have what Frontier project engineer Kevin Koskela describes as "extreme" reliability.
"One of the drawbacks to tin, if you make a solder joint with tin only, over some period of time -- it could be months or it could be years -- that tin grows little whiskers," Koskela said. "I've seen electron scans of those whiskers, and that's a real phenomenon."
Tin whiskers, as it turns out, present a hazard to expensive equipment such as satellites or critical equipment on which soldiers rely in the heat of battle.
"What happens when those whiskers grow is they can cause electrical shorts that can cause that equipment to fail," Koskela said. "There have been at least two satellites that failed because of whiskers."
For a company such as Frontier Electronic Systems, the reliability of components it uses is so important that it can't take the word of suppliers, even if they certify that no tin was used in the production.
Frontier engineers must sample the components to assure their makeup, and for that they have a convenient alternative, Koskela said.
It is the Oklahoma State University Electron Microscopy Laboratory, which recently opened in the nearby Venture I building in the Oklahoma Technology and Research Park.
The laboratory offers an array of high-tech electron and confocal, or laser light, microscopes that Frontier engineers can use to ensure the components contain no tin.
Koskela said the Frontier personnel are being trained to use the lab's scanning electron microscope. That's a powerful machine that uses what lab director Charlotte Ownby called an "energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis system" to reveal every element contained in a specimen.
Seated at the microscope on a recent afternoon, Ownby placed a sliver of a chip from a printer cartridge into the machine's vacuum tube. After it was scanned, she brought a graph to the computer screen that showed the sample contained a tiny amount of gold, as well as other elements.
"When electrons hit any sample, X-rays are given off, and the X-rays (reflect) the characteristic of each element," she said in explaining the process.
The machine holds enormous potential for Frontier Electronic Systems, she said. It's all because of those tin whiskers in the connections of key electronics parts.
"What they want to do in our lab is come over -- and we'll train them -- they will look at that connection and then find out if it's tin," she said. "If they can see tin above a background amount, then they are going to reject the part."
The centerpiece of the microscopy lab is a transmission electron microscope bought with a $750,000 National Science Foundation grant. The powerful microscope can take images of the interior of thinly sliced and frozen samples at a magnification range up to 1.5 million, or the molecular level, Ownby said.
The 3,000-square-foot laboratory also includes light microscopes and classroom space. In addition to private companies that pay per-hour charges to use the equipment, users include OSU researchers and students.
There's a lot of traffic flowing in and out of the lab.
"We have over 200 users of our facility," said Ownby, who retired after 31 years as a faculty member in OSU's Center for Veterinary Health Sciences to direct the microscopy lab.
Frontier's Koskela called the lab a "great link" for the company, which is just across the highway in far west Stillwater from OSU's research park where the Venture I building sits.
"The equipment they have at OSU is hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in expense, and that's just not something that a private business can afford to buy, especially if you use it only a dozen or two dozen times a year," he said. "Having this link between private industry and OSU is a wonderful way to help each other out."
