RJR Polymers, a leading developer of high performance liquid crystal polymer (LCP) Air Cavity semiconductor packaging (ACP), announced that it has changed its name to RJR Technologies Inc. The new name reflects the company’s growing role as a leading developer and high volume manufacturer of high performance LCP air cavity plastic packaging for RF and microwave applications. The company will begin operating under its new name and form a new website, www.rjrtechnologies.com, immediately.
“Over the last few years our company has transformed from a developer of packaging components and materials, including epoxy-coated components and sealing systems, for mostly custom projects to an advanced developer of high performance packaging technologies for high volume semiconductor suppliers,” explained President and CEO Wil Salhuana. “Today we sell standard Air Cavity Plastic (ACP) and RQFN packages that offer a compelling value proposition in terms of high performance, low cost and faster Time-to-Market. Our new name, RJR Technologies, better describes our new role.”
Indicative of the company’s success, RJR Technologies has already shipped millions of units of its new second generation ACP2 packages to leading manufacturers in the RF market. Over the next few years the company’s industry standard ACP packages promise to deliver similar benefits to applications in the Gallium Nitride (GaN) market, and RF Energy applications, such as lighting, automotive ignition systems and consumer microwave appliances.
Evolving Performance Requirements
The RF market offers excellent insight into the inherent advantages of RJR’s technology. In today’s highly competitive wireless infrastructure market, basestation manufacturers need devices capable of supporting high linearity, higher average output power and wider operating bandwidths. By reducing thermal resistance and parasitic effects, RJR Technologies’ ACP2 packaging supports higher levels of performance than existing ceramic packages while delivering the low cost and shorter development cycle of a plastic package. For example, by replacing ceramic packages with ACP2 using a copper thermal base rather than an expensive composite type metal, the packaging costs of RF power transistors can be reduced by as much as 50 percent while improving thermal dissipation by 30 percent.
“The rising performance requirements and increasing price pressures of today’s RF market are driving a migration to packaging that uses less expensive copper thermal bases and that calls for an air cavity rather than an over-molded solution,” said Wil Salhuana. “While over-molded solutions can use copper, they pay a penalty in performance. So the migration to a copper thermal base is quickly making ceramic packaging solutions in the RF market obsolete.”
RJR Technologies’ ACP technology differs from traditional air cavity ceramic (ACC) packaging by using a lid and ringframe constructed of LCP instead of traditional ceramic materials. This design enables the ringframe to be attached to the flange using RJR’s proprietary high performance epoxy adhesives, whereas, the ceramic package has to be brazed, which creates a very rigid structure. Using RJR epoxies reduces the stress and distortions of the flange because RJR designs its epoxies to allow a certain amount of flexibility. The in-strip solution offers numerous benefits: It eliminates the variability of sizes of the singulated package because RJR uses a standard lead frame outline as a carrier solution to reduce variability in the manufacturing lines; It supports automation of the manufacturing process using a cassette-to-cassette solution; Finally, it allows customers to use RJR’s fully automated sealing system based on the cassette-to-cassette assembly process, thereby increasing Units-Per-Hour (UPH) and substantially reducing the customer’s labor cost.
This innovative approach has a significant impact on package performance and cost. Lower stress on the flange allows equipment manufacturers to use thinner matching capacitors which reduce RF losses at both the gate and the drain, and end up producing higher gain and efficiency than comparable ceramic packages. As a result, designers using RJR Technologies’ ACP2 packages can deliver better performance than those using traditional ceramic packaging and, at the same time, reduce cost.
For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.rjrtechnologies.com