Micro-ball grid arrays: a practical chip-size packaging solution for nonvolatile memory applications

Summary form only given. Increasingly, the package preference of the semiconductor user is the ball grid array (BGA). The array package has gained wide acceptance by the SMT industry due to its improved assembly processing yield. More recently, board design and layout engineers are dramatically increasing the percentage of usable circuit board area by adapting the more miniature chip-scale and chip-size BGA packaging. Although a relatively new packaging technology, the first qualified product to be offered to the commodity market for flash memory is the chip-size micro-BGA (mBGA) package. By adapting CSP, engineers are not only achieving higher component density but they are also improving overall electrical performance. In this paper, the author details current and future applications of nonvolatile memory using the mBGA package with special focus on standards, reliability issues, materials and the manufacturing process for compliant mBGA and FmBGA packages.