Evaluation of a plastic encapsulated package using a scalable thermal mechanical test chip

The reliability performance of a plastic encapsulated package has been evaluated using a Thermal Mechanical Test Chip (TMTC) which has been designed to reduce the cycle time and cost of package reliability qualifications. The TMTC moves package reliability assessment closer to the package and assembly development cycle by breaking the tie between silicon qualification and package qualification. This approach, as confirmed by the evaluations described in this paper, demonstrate that relevant thermal-mechanical reliability failure mechanisms can be detected and characterized at significant cost and time savings compared to prior methods.