Logical alliance promotes compact packaging

Fairchild Semiconductor and Royal Philips Electronics have formed a working relationship to become multisource suppliers for small-scale logic packaging.

Fairchild Semiconductor and Royal Philips Electronics have formed a working relationship to become multisource suppliers for small-scale logic packaging.

This development increases the availability of the industry's two leading packaging technologies - Fairchild's MicroPak and Philips' Depopulated very-thin Quad Flat-pack No-leads (DQFN) packages.

This relationship will provide customers with second sourced, premier packaging solutions today, and with future logic packaging technologies.

Fairchild's MicroPak packaged logic and Philips' DQFN packaged devices are ideally suited for space-constrained applications such as cellular telephones, PDAs, watches, cameras, notebook computers and other portable electronics.

MicroPak offers designers single and dual gate products that provide a 65% space savings over SC70 packages.

The DQFN package is approximately 75% smaller than existing TSSOP packages.

"Customers often require multiple suppliers before adopting a new package", said Rich Lewis, Fairchild's marketing manager for Logic Products.

"Fairchild's relationship with Philips gives customers the flexibility and second source supply that they want, and promotes faster adoption rates of new packages for the industry".

"Philips' and Fairchild's working relationship provides our customers with second-source options in the best package designs available anywhere", said Bruce Potvin, director of marketing for logic products at Philips.

"This relationship creates the logic industry's benchmark for packaging excellence, and brings us one step closer to eliminating confusion in today's logic market".

Fairchild's six terminal MicroPak, with a footprint of only 1.45 x 1.00mm and a height of only 0.55mm, features leadless contact pads.

These contact pads eliminate the potential loss of coplanarity during the production process and allow the package to be soldered to the PC board more efficiently.

MicroPak's familiar overall dimensions (similar to passive chips) and 0.5mm terminal pitch facilitate qualification on high-volume production lines.

Philips' lead-free DQFN package addresses the market needs for smaller electronic products and components.

The DQFN package's extremely small size allows miniaturisation of the circuit board and frees board space for additional devices and functions.

Designed with a footprint of 2.5 x 3mm in a 14-pin configuration, the DQFN package is also available in 16- and 20-pin options.

The DQFN package offers improvements in heat dissipation and ease of board assembly.

The package incorporates an exposed die paddle, providing a 20% improvement in heat dissipation over a comparable TSSOP package.

The package contains no leads, thereby eliminating coplanarity and bent-lead issues.

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