The Encapsulation Trend and Advantages of Portable Electronics Circuit

IC packaging provides satisfactory electric and mechanical and thermal environment for integrated circuit chip through a series of process and methods. For already encapsulated device, people call it module. Along with the progress of the packaging technology, MCM (multi-chips module) concept appeared. Multi-chip module means install multi-naked chip and some passive components in a package body, thus to make an electronic component or system. In the mid 1990s, MCM technology has been thought as the best encapsulation technology, which can satisfy the needs of the continuous development of the electronic industry to the packaging technology with very high added value. But the manufacture high cost in MCM restricted its large scale application.  It used only for some of the environmental requirements, and not quite harsh too dispute cost occasion (such as aerospace, military research, etc).

The appearance of chip level product (Die products), opens up the road for the large scale application of the MCM technology. In portable system (such as laptop computers, mobile telephone, etc) and handheld system (such as PDA, XBOX etc), in order to make the system integrate more functions as well as small, light, thin and high reliability, the characteristics of the chip level product assembly technology advantage in MCM gradually reveal. Chip level MCM products, compared with the traditional SMD, the cost is lower; compared with today’s advanced SOC, the system greatly shortened product development cycle, which can win product time-to-market.

In this information age, more and more electronic devices are used in automobile, computer, communication, entertainment, etc. In these applications, people have more and more requirements on the electronic device function and high performance. At the same time, the products are required to have much smaller, lighter, more affordable and more reliable features. This requires electronic devices to develop towards multi-function, high performance, miniaturization, and lighting. Using chip level product is the best choice to realize these requirements, because it has the following advantages:

(1) The much smaller size: using a substrate naked chip or WLP encapsulation chip can easily get the least occupied space. As the chip level product, especially applications of 3 D product assembled by chip level product, portable electronic product packaging efficiency will get up considerably.

(2) The outstanding performance: the chip level product can shorten the length of the interconnection, reduce chip interconnect delay and reduce parasitic components (such as parasitic inductance and capacitance, etc.), which can enhance the chip I/O electric performance.

(3) Opportunities: at present, in the large palm system and the wireless system, the chip level product has been widely used, price advantage will further promote chip level product used in more new fields.

(4) Price: the much smaller substrate sizes, much simpler assembly process, faster time to market of new products can further reduce the system solutions funds.

(5) Reliability: on meeting consumer expectations in the ratio of performance, at the same time, it can provide higher quality and reliable products. At present, the chip level product equipment supplier has developed some powerful test tools, such as chip and high performance carrier to the wafer level test of aging, probe card, etc. the chip level product suppliers can use these tools to have more strict test and screening, which meet the application requirements.

COB package

The so-called COB, is to attach the naked chip to the interconnect substrate with electric conduction or the non-electric conduction, and then to have lead bonding to realize its electrical connection. If the naked chip is directly exposed to air, it is vulnerable to be polluted or artificial damaged, thus impact or destroy the chip function, so it used glue to cover up the chip and bonding lead bag.

FC encapsulation

Using the interconnect terminal (I/O port) of integrated circuit and interconnection substrate to realize chip adhesion and performance of the interconnection, that is called direct chip installation. The chip surface toward boards, so it is also called the FC. Some new and emerging installation FC technology is providing good benefits for the encapsulation. When FC is installed, through the precise alignment to put chip face down (the board), thus it installed directly in the board. FC now mainly divided into the reflow soldering FC and adhesion FC two kinds.