Novel Integrated Materials for Plastic Encapsulated Microcircuits

The use of plastic-encapsulated microcircuits (PEM's) is one of the new major thrust areas in military electronic component packaging. PEM will potentially replace hermetically-sealed ceramic and metal devices presently used to achieve and maintain highreliability in military use environments. On the proposed Phase I effort, Triton Systems will apply its broad experience in polymeric materials design, nanomaterial engineering and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding to create integratedpolymeric materials that will have the potential of significantly advancing the current state-of-the-art in encapsulation material performance for non-hermetic integrated circuits. The materials will be designed to have a microporous percolating structurefor rapid escape of moisture during thermal assembly to eliminate popcorning effect. Inorganic fillers will be incorporated in the formulations to lower the coefficient of thermal expansion and to enhance the thermal conductivity. Incorporation of rubberparticles into the matrix will also be evaluated as a way to lower the modulus. During the Phase I option, the selected formulations will be further enhanced to provide integral EMI shielding without comprising electrical resistivity. In Phase II, wewill optimize the material formulations and carry out a component-level demonstration by applying the selected materials to the integrated circuit package frames.There is an immediate need of plastic-encapsulated microcircuits with improved highreliability in military electronics packaging. Materials optimized for better thermal and mechanical characteristics will lead to increased operational cycles before failure and lowering replacement costs. The integral EMI shielding and increased thermalconductivity will allow further integration, higher density integrated circuits, reduced volume and increased functionality.