Phthalonitrile-based electronic packages for high temperature applications

Epoxy is ubiquitous in the electronics industry for its application as a package resin. However, harsher environments and more stringent conditions arising from emerging applications have driven epoxy to its servicing limit [1-5]. These applications have to rely heavily on fillers to push the performance limit further. Alternative high performance electronic packaging materials, including bismaleimide (BMI) [6,7] and cyanate esters (CE) [8-10], have also been investigated. In this paper, we will discuss a variant of phthalonitrile (PN) [11-14], which as a resin itself is able to withstand a temperature of 300°C in normal atmosphere. Besides comparable properties especially in terms of mechanical strength, PN also exhibits strong thermal stability. High quality adherence of filler-matrix is not just observed in scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images but also reflected in the bond shear strength. The underlying mechanism of the performance of PN as an alternative packaging material was studied using Gaussian09™. It is shown that the interaction of triazine and phthalocyanine with silicon and aluminum atoms on silica and alumina respectively, is the factor behind the bond shear behavior observed.