IC Failures Linked to Resin Series?

MEW writes "According to this article, 'the semiconductor industry began using red phosphorus as a flame retardant instead of the Br-based compound it had used for years,' due to environmental concerns. By July 2002, 1000 tons of the stuff was used for about a billion chips, when they stopped due to high component failures. In particular Sumitomo Bakelite caused rampant failures in Fujitsu disk drives. There's still a lot of Sumitomo Bakelite out there, and we may see the worst of it soon, as components start to fail prematurely. This was posted by Spaceman on Macintouch who says that the bad material accounts for 'half the world's supply of 'IC Plastics'' and can result in 'sudden or premature end of life.'"

Comments

Another result of junk science

[Anonymous Coward]

Sumitomo stops using Br-based compounds because if they ever catch fire, some dioxins could be generated.

((( Never mind that any vegetable that burns also frees up dioxins, since a few billion years ago, or that Ben & Jerrys ice cream includes a significant amount of dioxins )))
http://www.junkscience.com/nov99/bjpress.htm

Of course, the enviroradicals convinced the silly Europeans to legislate against Br compounds.

Now, you are seeing billions of failed IC's thrown into landfills or incinerated because... as usual the tree huggers did not do a cost/benefit analysis; they simply scared willing politicians into avoiding trace-level, junk science "contaminants"... ... at any cost regardless of scientific/economic rational value.

Re:Just remember that everything carries a cost

[Anonymous Coward]

And moderators, how exactly is this flamebait? Remember that "I don't agree with statement" is not equivalent to "flamebait." You want flamebait? Bite me, dickheads.