Supply Chain Collaboration to Achieve Toxics Use Reduction. 2011.

The costs for investigating and evaluating the various lead-free electronics materials and manufacturing processes can be cost prohibitive for an individual company to undertake alone. Consequently, the New England Lead-free Electronics Consortium was formed as a collaborative effort of New England companies spanning the electronics supply chain to help move the industry towards lead-free electronics. The Consortium is a working collaboration of industry, government, and academia. For the past several years, the Consortium has conducted research and testing for using various lead-free materials for the manufacture of printed circuit boards. The Consortium has been successful in identifying lead-free materials and processes to address the challenges of assembly and rework. The Consortium is currently conducting research to address the long-term reliability challenge of lead-free electronics.

Authors: G. Morose, S. Shina, R. Farrell

Journal of Cleaner Production, Volume 19, Issue 5