Low cost solution to thermal enhancement package for plastic encapsulated microcircuits

Integrated circuits (IC) are continually being developed and improved in order to meet the demands of customers all over the world. For instance, ICs are becoming smaller with faster clock speeds, increased operation frequencies, and greater circuit densities. These changes in IC designs have caused an increase in the thermal demands of IC packages, and in turn, have created a challenge for IC manufacturers. The challenge is to create a low-cost and high quality package that can handle increased thermal demands. The new thermal enhancement package (TEP) concept was developed in response to the increasing thermal demands on ICs. TEP uses a heat slug mounted under the die attach pad using high thermal conductive adhesive prior to encapsulation. The heat can easily and rapidly dissipate to the outside environment via the high thermal conductive adhesive and heat slug, respectively. The addition of the heat slug adds on an extra operation to the manufacturing process; however, very little processing time and cost are added to the price of the IC packages.