"Tin Whiskers" a Growing Electronic Concern

Tin whiskers: They sound so cute, so harmless. How could something called "tin whiskers" be one of the most serious problems that will face computing over the next few years? Here's how.

Tin whiskers are tiny filaments of tin, a component of solder, which form on electronics components and cause short circuiting when they bridge from one wire to another. The whiskers form spontaneously and over time, and no one has yet figured out exactly why they grow. And that's the problem... because as electronic components get smaller and smaller, whiskers become a bigger concern. The bridging and short-circuiting effect is simply much easier since components are closer together and the whiskers have less distance they have to cross to cause short the circuit. That's a close-up picture (courtesy Wikipedia) of the whiskers in action (click the pic for a better look).

Tin whiskers are an even bigger problem now because the alternative to tin solder isn't a pretty one: lead. Lead is not as susceptible to the whisker effect, but now that lead has been widely outlawed (in Europe it was phased out in 2006), we're seeing the problem far more than before. That will only get worse as lead is completely eliminated in the U.S.

The solution? For now, nothing. There's no known alternative to lead or tin solder, and since the problem takes months or years to crop up, the issue is largely being ignored. That could change in a couple of years, when failure rates begin to skyrocket with no advance warning. Is your computer crashing for no apparent reason? This might be why.