Application Spotlight:  Gel-Pak® Gel-Tray Product For Shipping Fragile GaAs Chips used in New Smartphone

One of the Asia’s premier GaAs foundries, offering high speed GaAs MMIC’s (monolithic microwave ICs) and RFIC’s (radio frequency ICs) had been working to get their PA (power amplifier) chips qualified by a leading US semiconductor manufacturer for use in a new smartphone.  The GaAs foundry was reGel-Tray Product For Shipping Fragile GaAs Chips | Gel-Pak® | Gel-Pak® Gel-Tray Product For Shipping Fragile GaAs Chipsquired to make several large shipments of KGD (known good die) to the manufacturer for evaluation in order to complete the qualification process.  It was critical that they use a device carrier that would protect the fragile GaAs die during shipping.

Challenges:

  • The GaAs chips needed to arrive to the manufacturer in the same condition they had left the foundry. 
  • To eliminate any impact on the qualification results, the device carrier could not outgas or leave particles or residue on the chips.
  • The fragile GaAs chips could not come in contact with the top or sides of the device carrier.
  • The Foundry wanted to use an industry standard size device carrier (2” x 2” pocketless tray) that would work with the manufacturer’s existing die handling process. 

Gel-Pak worked with the foundry to understand all of the specifications of the project including the number of devices that needed to be shipped per year, the number of devices that had to fit on each carrier, and the carrier size that would work best with the manufacturer’s process fixtures.  Based on all of the customer’s requirements, Gel-Pak determined that the Gel-Tray product (BD Series) would work best for this application.

 

The BD Tray provided to the foundry consisted of a 2" x 2" pocketless plastic tray coated with a proprietary Gel material and stored inside a plastic hinged box. The Gel-coated tray had the right amount of holding force to keep the delicate GaAs chips in place during the shipping process.  As a result, the chips arrived at the manufacturer free from damage and contamination.  Ultimately, the GaAs foundry’s chips were qualified by the manufacturer who is now an integral part of the smartphone supply chain.