Chemical leadframe roughening process and resulting leadframe and integrated circuit package

Abstract

A chemical leadframe roughening process includes cleaning and chemically micro-etching a raw copper leadframe to remove organic material and oxide material from the surface. The surface of the leadframe is then roughened using an organic and peroxide solution, resulting in a finely pitted surface morphology. The roughened leadframe is cleaned to remove organic material, and then is plated with a lead-free plating material (such as a layered plating of nickel-palladium-gold (NiPdAu)) having a reflow temperature higher than the reflow temperature of lead-based solder. The plated leadframe exhibits the desired finely pitted morphology that is believed to provide for greater bonding with the mold compound used to make a finished integrated circuit package, thereby improving the moisture sensitivity level (MSL) performance of the package.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.