Designing with Plastic RF Power Transistors

Freescale has a legacy of manufacturing high power RF devices stretching back more than five decades. Over that time, packaging technology has evolved along with the wafer technology packaged inside. In the past decade, the shift to plastic packages has accelerated in the high volume wireless segment. Today, almost all pre--driver and driver stage devices and most output stage RF power devices are available in plastic packages. Other RF power market segments are now moving to take advantage of the benefits of plastic packaging for high power RF applications. Freescale is the leader in high power RF packaging and has been making high power RF LDMOS devices using plastic packages since the mid--1990s. More than 200 million devices using plastic packages have been manufactured in the past 15 years.

This white paper shows the main benefits of RF power plastic packages and provides recommendations on PCB layout, mounting and soldering techniques to create a robust as well as cost-effective design solution using over-molded plastic RF power devices.