To meet the needs of electronic components in spacecraft, Foster-Miller developed corrosion-resistant, near-hermetic plastic packaging that combines two new technologies: 1) a sol-gel coating process to protect aluminum bond wires and bond pads from corrosion, and 2) highly impermeable liquid crystal polymer (LCP) films to prevent moisture transport into the package.
In the first stage of development, we demonstrated the feasibility of integrating these technologies into a low cost, lightweight alternative to the current packaging approach: expensive, heavy ceramic and metal hermetic packages. We showed that our sol-gel and polymeric materials of construction would reduce or eliminate failures due to entrained moisture (“popcorning”), corrosion, and die stress fracture in military systems.
In subsequent efforts, the sol-gel coating and package sealing processes are being developed and optimized for low cost and high reliability. Prototypes will be assembled and tested to evaluate the reliability and compatibility with standard electronics manufacturing processes. A radiation-hard IC will be packaged and the reliability will be compared to the same IC packaged with existing technology. We expect to show an 80 percent reduction in both cost and weight, while maintaining excellent reliability.
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