Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. (TAEC), a subsidiary of Japan''s Toshia Corp., confirmed Wednesday that it''s goal is to offer all of its memory products in lead free versions by the end of the year.

Toshiba said it was beginning the second phase of its conversion plan with regard to lead-free products, working with customers to gradually convert all of its memory product shipments to lead free versions . It first began rolling out lead-free versions of some of its products by request at the end of 2003.

As part of its goal to be lead free by the end of the year, TEAC released Toshiba''s Lead(Pb)-Free Memory Products Plan, available on the company Web site. It outlines the company''s policy with regard to lead free products, and also identifies the lead free plating materials, tin-silver and tin-copper, selected as alternative materials for solder plating for its memory products, and the lead free solder ball material selected, a combination of tin-silver-copper.

"Toshiba has selected tin-silver and tin-copper as the primary lead-free alternative materials for lead-plating in QFP, SOP, TSOP and SOJ packages, over either a copper or Alloy 42 leadframe," Phil de Guzman, TEAC quality assurance manager, memory products, said in a statement. "Toshiba''s reliability studies have determined that tin-copper, when used over Alloy 42 (a compound widely used for leadframes) minimizes whisker growth and demonstrates favorable results when compared to tin-copper used over copper," Guzman said.