Jan. 25, 2007 — Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. and ZyCube Co., Ltd. announced an agreement to cooperate in commercializing ZyCSP™ an image sensor LSI with buried interconnects (also called TSV (Through Silicon Via)) that is equivalent in size to a wafer level chip size package(CSP). The companies’ state that compared to current CMOS and CCD sensor packages, the ZyCSP™ achieves thinner, smaller, lighter and highly reliable characteristics.

ZyCSP™ is the CSP for image sensors with buried interconnect technology developed by ZyCube. Plating and/or burying a hole through the sensor LSI wafer and applying wiring technology without wire bonding allowed for high-density and low-profile which is less than 0.6mm reported to be the world’s thinnest CSP.

“Consumers desire information devices to be smaller, higher density with multi-functions as seen in camera-equipped mobile phones and digital cameras,” said Manabu Bonkohara, CEO of ZyCube. “Our strategy is to focus on the image sensor market for these devices for now, and eventually expand to the 3D compound product market with digital signal processing function. With our ZyCSP™ technology, we are determined not only to take 15% share of the world’s CMOS, CCD sensor market, but also standardize packaging technologies in the world.”

OKI, on the other hand holds advanced wafer level CSP (W-CSP) technology achieving packages equivalent to chip sizes. Through the collaboration, OKI will work to achieve smaller and thinner passive and active components taking advantage of its W-CSP and semiconductor processing technologies. It will also be possible for OKI to apply the new production technology for making LSIs having buried interconnections to its own products.

The two companies will jointly develop and manufacture packages for CMOS and CCD sensors with buried interconnects. OKI will build a combination 8-inch/12-inch development and production line for ZyCSP™ at its Hachioji facility in Japan. According to the business scale, OKI will expand the production line.

“In addition to our current 6 and 8-inch W-CSP assembly foundry business, we will actively provide small and high-performance packaging solutions by expanding into 12 inch with ZyCube,” said Takaki Yamada, President of Silicon Micro Device Company at Oki Electric Industry. “We will deploy business in the growing information device market with ZyCSP™ products, and remain committed to creating new applications in the ‘personal and mobile’ markets, and provide smaller, higher performance and lower power consumption products for mobile terminals.”