 The
Interconnection Group was formed in 1989, it nucleated
around work in the control of adhesive dispensing for
surface mount assembly and the generation of a concurrent
process and product design tool for reflow soldering.
Since then we have concentrated on the mechanical and
manufacturing engineering issues associated with electronic
products, drawing on the skills of electronics engineers,
physicists, materials scientists and chemists.
During this period we have grown from 3 to around 20
including associates and graduated a number of full
and part time Ph.D's from home and overseas. Adhesives
and solders have remained a major theme of the group
over the years. Our work in adhesives has turned to
understanding anisotropic adhesives in flip chip applications
following work in isotropic die attach adhesives. Work
in solders has now also moved towards both novel and
low cost flip chip but we remain very involved in the
construction of new generation reflow machines and alternative
soldering machines building on our skills in control
and instrumentation.
 We
have always viewed work in the business issues in electronics
manufacturing as complementary to our technological
and more conventionally scientifically oriented work.
We began this in 1991 with a collaboration with Harvard
Business School on the benchmarking of the Product Introduction
Process for mainframe multichip modules. This work introduced
us to the methodologies applied by the international
business school community and we have used this knowledge
in our work in benchmarking R&D in Singapore and
Taiwan; and manufacturing in China and Eastern Europe.
Our most recent work in this area has focused on describing
the UK industry and the impact of the technology trends
on the UK industry. Our blend of the business and technological
is also shown in the work we have had going for a number
of years in the environmental design of telecommunications
systems in the context of both their economic and environmental
impacts. More recently our work has begun to seriously
explore the issues associated with rework, substrate
choice and packaging design - all in the context of
steadily reducing dimensions. This work is soundly grounded
in the materials, computational modelling and experimental
skills grown over the years.
 In
1997 we won, in a national competition, leadership of
the PRIME Faraday
Partnership. Drawing upon complimentary skills from
Nottingham University and Pera, PRIME has a £5M
research portfolio concerned with the technologies for
the development of products with interdependant electronics
and mechanics, or where the mechanical performance of
the electronics is critical. Our work within the Faraday
will include understanding the cost of alternative configurations
of electronics and the supply chain for PRIME products.
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