Electronics Development Corporation (United States)

The authors review some potential IC encapsulants, with special focus on the high-performance silicone gel, its chemistry, and its use as a VLSI device encapsulant for single and multichip applications. It is noted that high-performance silicone gel possesses excellent electrical and physical properties for IC protection. With their intrinsic low modulus and soft gel-like nature, silicone gels have become very effective encapsulants for larger, high I/O, wire-bonded VLSI chips. Recent studies indicate that adequate IC chip surface protection with high-performance silicone gels in plastic packaging could replace conventional ceramic hermetic packaging.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

High-performance silicone gel has been shown to possess excellent electrical and physical properties for VLSI packaging. With their intrinsic low modulus and soft gel-like nature, silicone gels have become very effective encapsulants for larger, high-I/O, wire-bonded VLSI chips. Recent studies indicate that adequate IC chip surface protection with high-performance silicon gels in plastic packaging could possibly replace conventional ceramic hermetic packaging. Some potential IC encapsulants are reviewed, focusing on the silicone gel, its chemistry, and its use as a VLSI device encapsulant for single- and multichip application. Testing of the gel is discussed, and temperature-humidity-bias test results are reported. Military applications of the gel are considered. >

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from the scalp of subjects as they monitored changing digital readouts for values that went “out-of-bounds”. Workload was manipulated by varying the number of readouts that were monitored concurrently. The ERPs elicited by changes in the readouts showed long latency positivities that increased in amplitude, not only with the number of readouts monitored, but also with the number of monitored readouts that were “in danger” of going out-of-bounds. No effects were found due to the number of non-monitored readouts “in danger”. This evidence indicates that subjects (1) selectively attended to the monitored readouts and (2) processed the monitored readouts differently as the readouts approached the out-of-bounds levels to which an overt response was required.