USC doctoral student unravels ‘tin whisker’ mystery

Congratulations, now can you actually link to the paper instead of summarizing it in half a sentence as is "caused by high-strain gradient built up inside the device"? This is useless reporting.

I assume whiskers cause a short circuit. Why can't the circuit board be coated with plastic, epoxy, non-conductive paint, or something to prevent the whiskers from causing a short?

This is the University of South Carolina, not Southern California which most people probably associate with “USC”.

"Historically lead (Pb) has been added to the solders to prevent whisker growth. Due to the harmful effects on human health and environments, it is no longer a valid solution to prevent whisker growth with lead. With the shift to whisker- prone “Pb-free” solders, controlling whisker growth from low melting point metals has again become technically challenging."

&#62; While manufactures had been able to control some whiskers by mixing small amounts of lead into tin solder, the 2006 European Union ban on lead in most electronic equipment had ignited a debate among scientists about whether whiskers would remain a perpetual problem.<p>Oh Europe. Yes, let's ban the use of minuscule amounts of lead so that people will have to replace entire devices when they fail.

This is an amazing discovery. I'm surprised it isn't more prevalent in the news. This whisker issue has been a thorn in the side of many since ROHS was implemented. The biggest impact with this I see is safer, more reliable planes. How exciting.

If the functionality loss is caused by these whiskers shorting circuits, why can't one simply restore functionality by lightly scraping the soldering to knock off the whiskers?