Plastic Ball-Grid-Arrays (PBGA): Are they ready for environmentally harsh Aerospace applications?

Although the plastic ball-grid-array (PBGA) is accepted in the commercial and industrial community as a viable packaging technology, their acceptance in an environmentally harsh aerospace application has been limited. The limitation is due to a perceived reliability and durability risk most aerospace industries are unwilling to accept. However, with the abundant availability of PBGA packages, and a limited source of comparable substitutes, the aerospace industry is faced with a dilemma. The aerospace industry does not drive the semiconductor market, since the volumes for semiconductor devices are low in comparison with other high-volume semiconductor consumer industry. Therefore, the aerospace industry is faced with validating the viability of PBGA packaging technology for harsh environmental aerospace applications.

This paper will discuss a formal method for validating PBGA packaging technology for environmentally harsh aerospace applications. The approach will include the use of several Six-Sigma Plus tools including Taguchi Design of Experiment (DOE). Since, the cost associated with validating every design is prohibitive, software for simulating the physical design and loading conditions was examined. The data generated from the experiment will be used to provide confidence that PBGA packaging technology can be used in environmentally harsh aerospace applications and that the simulation techniques can be used to assess that durability.