There’s been no shortage of criticism for lead-free solder over the past decade. But the shift away from lead brings some significant benefits that can help designers and manufacturers.

One of the biggest question marks surrounding lead-free solders is their reliability. But Ronald C. Lasky says that it’s difficult to support that perception.

“A lot of people claim that lead free solder is not as reliable as lead-based solder,” said Lasky, an instructional professor at Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering. “We’re now five years into the implementation of RoHS and we’ve made $3 trillion worth of electronics. We haven’t really noticed any big change in reliability. However, it is clear that we have not established long term reliability, as most of these products have not been deployed that long.”