The Manufacture and Reliability of the EPIC Chip Carrier

Following extensive studies that demonstrated that some types of plastic encapsulation can be used in high reliability environments, the EPIC chip carrier was conceived and developed as a cost‐effective micropackage for ICs. The EPIC chip carrier is manufactured by adaptations of PCB techniques with metallisation suitable for auto‐wire bonding. It is a low‐cost alternative to the ceramic chip carrier, but with a much better electrical performance, derived from lower parasitics of the materials employed. Reliability studies have confirmed the suitability of the EPIC for 20 year life operations to which an added benefit is the avoidance of TCE mismatch problems sometimes obtained with ceramic chip carriers on PCBs.