Eric Bastow: Tin is a very useful metal, very shiny metal, and it melts at 232 degrees C, which is 450 degrees Fahrenheit. It is very useful, because it has a long and wide history for use in solders. Tin lead, tin lead silver, there are high-lead alloys that contain tin, and, nowadays, with the advent of lead-free, a lot of the lead-free alloys are also tin based. You have tin silver; SAC, which is a tin silver copper alloy; and tin antimony.
Tin, in it's molten form, is an excellent solvent of other metals, and for that reason, that lends to it being very good at wetting, as a solder, and also very good at bonding and forming intermetallics to make those solder joints. It also has a very respectable thermal conductivity at 73 watts per meter degree K.
So tin, again, is extremely useful. It makes a lot of the electronics that we love, and are familiar with, possible. If you'd like more information about tin and some of the alloys that it's used in, please contact us at AskUs@indium.com
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