Plastic Ball Grid Array (PBGA)

The Plastic Ball Grid Array or PBGA package is the industry description of what is sometimes referred to as Motorola’s OverMolded Pad Array Carrier or OMPAC package. It was developed by Motorola in the late 1980’s for use in Motorola products with space limitations such as radios, pagers and cellular telephones. Since that time it has grown in popularity within the electronic industry and standard body sizes and pin counts have been adopted by JEDEC and soon by EIAJ. The many benefits of using PBGA over similar lead count leaded devices include: 1. Board space efficiency. 2. Thermal and electrical performance and ease of enhancing both. 3. Excellent surface mount yields when compared to fine pitch leaded devices. 4. Lower profile (i.e., overall thickness). 5. Compatibility with existing surface mount, test and handling equipment. 6. Potential lower total cost of ownership compared to leaded devices due to reduced scrap, rework and lack of need for fine pitch assembly equipment.