RoHS - Restriction of Hazardous Substances

With the exception of explicit orders for a HAL SnPb (lead-tin) surface, all of our products are RoHS compliant. Multi CB - RoHS Declaration of Compliance

The fundamental principle of the European RoHS guideline¹ is that as of 1-July-2006, all electronic devices introduced to the market may not contain lead or certain other hazardous substances. This applies to the following produc

• Household appliances
• IT and telecommunication equipment
• Consumer electronics
• Lighting devices
• Electrical and electronic tools (except for large, stationary industrial devices)
• Toys, recreational and sporting articles
• Vending machines

For circuit boards, RoHS compliance is controlled by two components: The base material  (including solder-stop and marking print) and the surface.

The respective manufacturers (Isola, Peters, etc.) have confirmed the RoHS compliance of our base materials without any limitations.

The surface is selected by the customer. In addition to the HAL SnPb surface (which contains lead, but is still permitted in some cases²), the following lead-free surfaces are available from Multi CB

• Immersion tin
• Immersion silver
• Immersion gold
• HAL lead-free
• OSP

If you have been ordering your circuit boards with HAL SnPb (lead-tin) surfaces up to now, you may select one of these lead-free surface alternatives in the future; the normal choices are immersion gold or HAL lead-free.

The immersion gold surface has increasingly become a more popular alternative to HAL, because its planar (flat) character makes it ideally suited for SMD.

To avoid confusion, we strongly recommend marking all such circuit boards in the future, especially subsequent re-orders of “HAL lead-tin” shipments, as “lead-free”.

<sub>¹ RoHS (Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances) limits the use of the following materials in electrical and electronic devices: lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, as well as the flame retardants polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE).

² Exception clauses permit the continue use of products containing lead in some industrial branches. For this reason, it remains possible to order the “HAL lead-tin” surface from Multi CB.</sub>