Metal Plating on Mold Compound for EMI Shielding with Industrial Test Compliance

The need for EMI shielding is becoming more pronounced as it is driven by miniaturization of devices, higher bandwidth of market needs, multiple applications on the same device, and heightened safety concerns with regard to the threat of electromagnetism to the health of users. In this paper, we present a reliable method for thin film coating on the surface of a molding compound by nickel and copper plating for EMI shielding applications. The correct adhesion promoter is carefully selected before proceeding into the plating process. After that, the plated samples were subjected to a series of aging processes following standard industrial compliance, and were found to have passed all the required criteria. The new approach has several advantages, such as excellent distribution of three-dimensional conformal coating and ease of mass production, which ultimately lowers the cost of production.