May 24, 2011 — Carsem, turnkey semiconductor packaging and test services provider, will grow its Suzhou, China factory by an additional 40,000 square meters (430,000 square feet). The additional space will allow Carsem to increase their Suzhou factory micro leadframe package (MLP) capacity from the current 5 million units per day to over 20 million per day, with a focus on copper wire bonding.
Construction commenced in Q1 2011 and production operations are expected to begin in Q1 2012. The expansion will bring the total factory size to 56,000 square meters (600,000 square feet), with expanded test capability to match the new production output. Carsem expects to attract new potential customers with the capacity boost.
The added assembly space will allot for increased copper wirebonding, along with traditional gold wire bond. Several packaging houses are moving to copper wire bonds for increasingly complex packages. MagnaChip Semiconductor now offers cost-competitive and state-of-the-art copper wire bonding technology and STATS ChipPAC Ltd. (SGX-ST: STATSChP) is investing in Cu wire bonding for finer silicon nodes (45/40nm) and low-k/extra low-k (ELK). Opponents consider gold wire to perform better than Cu wire, citing in-service product reliability, process yield, and "unproven performance."
Once completed, the Suzhou expansion will bring Carsem’s total MLP manufacturing capacity in both their Ipoh, Malaysia and Suzhou, China factory locations to over 26 million units per day.
Carsem MLPs are quad flat pack no-lead (QFN) and small-outline no-lead (SON) packages complaint to JEDEC MO220 and MO229 standards and are also offered with enhanced technologies such as copper-clip, flip-chip, system-in-package (SiP) and the 0.3mm-thick X3 form factor.
Carsem provides turnkey packaging and test services to the semiconductor industry, and offers a wide range of package & test services. Visit the website: www.carsem.com.
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