> I just worked on a circuit board (the one I need the SRAM for) and had a
> very unusual thing happen.
>
> While soldering on the vias, and on a couple of the SRAM chips, with the
> board entirely removed from the system, I had several instances of what
> appeared to be explosions as I heated the joints.  These were NOT any kind
> of bubbling, these were bright noisy POPs, which threw red and yellow
> sparks.  The board has a couple of 100uF caps, and a bunch of 0.1uF, but
> had
> not been powered in months, and in any case, I was only touching the one
> point, no possibility of a short.
>
> The lithium coin cell had leaked over this area, which had a number of
> lead
> solder joints, and copper traces of course.
> I am wondering if there's a possible chemical reaction there that leads to
> an explosive?

Sounds like you might have ignited a little bit of lithium.
It melts and burns rather easily and quite violently. The low
temperature burn (around 400 degrees F) is crimson red, as it
burns and reacts with oxygen the flame gets hotter and turns
white. Kind of like a magnesium flare.

It's definitely something you don't want to ignite, you can't
even put it out with water because lithium reacts with
water - not as bad as sodium, but bad enough.

-- 
Cris Wilson
Information Resource Consultant
College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities
Clemson University
cris@clemson.edu
Report problems to: aah_computers@clemson.edu


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