CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This Utility Patent Application claims priority to German Patent Application No. 10 2019 112 778.5, filed May 15, 2019, which is incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND

The present invention relates to methods of manufacturing packages, and to a package.

A package may comprise an electronic component, such as a semiconductor chip, mounted on a carrier, such as a leadframe. Packages may be embodied as encapsulated electronic component mounted on a carrier with electrical connects extending out of the encapsulant and being coupled with an electronic periphery.

SUMMARY

There is a need to efficiently manufacture packages.

According to an exemplary embodiment, a method of manufacturing packages is provided, wherein the method comprises providing an electrically conductive sheet being continuous at least in a mounting region, mounting first main surfaces of a plurality of electronic components on the continuous mounting region of the sheet, forming interconnect structures for electrically coupling second main surfaces of the electronic components with the sheet, wherein the second main surfaces oppose the first main surfaces, and after the forming, structuring the sheet.

According to another exemplary embodiment, a method of manufacturing packages is provided, wherein the method comprises providing an electrically conductive substantially continuous sheet, mounting a plurality of electronic components, having a vertical current flow during operation, on the sheet, at least partially encapsulating the electronic components by an encapsulant, and after the encapsulating, patterning the sheet from a non-encapsulated back side of the sheet to thereby form individual carriers for each package.

According to yet another exemplary embodiment, a package is provided, wherein the package comprises a carrier structured into a plurality of sub-structures spaced by at least one gap, at least one electronic component mounted with its lower main surface on the carrier, at least one interconnect structure electrically coupling an upper main surface of the at least one electronic component with the carrier, and an encapsulant at least partially encapsulating the at least one electronic component and partially encapsulating the carrier in such a way that the at least one gap is non-encapsulated.

According to an exemplary embodiment, a manufacturing architecture for producing a plurality of packages simultaneously is provided, wherein an electrically conductive and substantially or entirely continuous sheet is used for supporting components, interconnect structures and an encapsulant before structuring or patterning the sheet into separate carriers for the individual packages. By taking this measure, the continuous sheet may serve, during a significant part of the manufacturing process, as a strong mechanical support structure which simplifies handling of the tiny electronic components and which also renders formation of interconnect structures simple. Only at a very late stage of the manufacturing process and in particular after having formed interconnect structures connecting an upper main surface of the mounted electronic components with an upper main surface of the sheet, the sheet is then structured into separate and in particular discontinuous portions. Such portions may then form carriers for mechanically carrying and electrically connecting the respective electronic component(s). Thus, an efficient, simple and failure-robust method of manufacturing a large number of packages with high reliability can be obtained.

As a consequence of the described manufacturing process, obtained packages may have portions of the carrier separated by one or more gaps which are not covered by encapsulant material, since the carrier portions separated by the gaps have been produced as patterned portions of the sheet only after encapsulation. The gaps have thus been previously filled with sheet material when encapsulation occurs.

According to an exemplary embodiment, structuring of an electrically conductive continuous sheet into carriers (for example copper leadframes) for packages may be done after the application of a first level interconnect and/or after encapsulation or housing (for instance by molding) in large format by parallel processing. This may allow for panel packaging with low effort and high flexibility as well as for a pre-packaging option.

