Thermal conductivity of molten lead-free solders

The paper reports measurements of the thermal conductivity of a number of molten solders for the electronics industry that are part of a group of materials designed to be free of the toxic problems associated with lead-based solders. The measurements have been carried out with a transient hot-wire instrument originally designed for the measurement of the thermal conductivity of pure molten metals. In the application reported here the instrument has been used largely unchanged but an improved finite-element code has been used for the analysis of the raw data so as to yield the thermal conductivity of the molten solders. The measurements extend from the melting point of the solder up to 625 K. The uncertainty in the thermal conductivity measurements is estimated to be no larger than 3%.