I am designing a circuit using an IC, LTC7004, which is a high-side MOSFET driver. There is one pin (10th) marked as NC.
NC (Pin 10): No Connect. This pin should be floated.
In my PCB design, I'm pulling out a track from the 8th pin which is the pin to connect the source of a FET as in the figure below.
If I can pass the bootstrap (9th) track over the 10th pin, I can have a wider track for the source connector than the one I currently have.
Since the 10th pin is a no connect pin, will it make a mess if I bend and break away the 10th pin from the IC? (Then I can design a custom foot print to have only 9 pins with the MSOP10 package dimensions). Should NC pins need to be soldered onto a PCB with isolated pads by any means?