ABSTRACT Solder is the mainstay of electronics assembly, but many connections need to be made with other materials. This paper addresses the performance of the latest generation of two of these: thermally and electrically conductive materials. Understanding the tradeoffs between different thermal and electrical interface materials increases product design options and can improve manufacturability. Thermal management in electronics assemblies is becoming increasingly difficult as chips generate more heat and products evolve into small form factors with poor air flow options. Thermal design is limited by the need for easy assembly which can result in high resistances between different elements of the thermal management system. Thermal interface materials (TIMs) are used to minimize these resistances and a broad range of materials are used: greases, gels, putty, phase-change materials (PCMs), pads, tapes, adhesives and solders. A simple setup based on ASTM D5470 for testing TIMs is presented. The performance and trade-offs (ease of application, pressure effects, reworkability & environmental resistance) between the different material types are shown. Adhesive cure time has often been a bottleneck in electronics assembly. High throughput operations require fast curing adhesives to match. Evaluating cure behavior becomes more challenging in the latest generation of electrically conductive adhesives where cure times are measured in seconds. High cure temperatures (180°C) to reduce cure time would drive higher substrate costs. Lower cure temperatures (160°C) are desired instead to minimize substrate damage from thermal exposure. Vendors have met the challenge and developed adhesives that meet these needs. RFID flip chip attach is presented as an example application using these fast curing, low temperature adhesives. In the first step, manual placement machine modifications for insitu cure and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) are used to evaluate both conductive and non-conductive adhesives in a Pd-bump to printed silver ink on PET attach operation. In another evaluation, automated production line runs are used to evaluate anisotropic conductive adhesives (ACAs) for a gold bump to aluminum antenna on PET attach operation. Tags made with these adhesives were subjected to thermal shock & cycling (-40°C to 70°C) and ESD then tested for RFID performance.