Issue

Advanced packaging is a dynamic sector of the semiconductor device manufacturing realm, as evidenced in the breadth of back-end and final assembly-and-test products on display at this year’s SEMICON West exhibition, held July 16-19 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.

Greetings from the Constitution State. For my first contribution to this publication - since developments in new packaging technology have failed to keep pace with Moore’s Law - I chose to consider industry consortia’s role in accelerating the rate of advancement in device packaging.

For decades, materials developers and formulators have used common, industry-standard measurement tools for assessing a given material’s properties and characteristics to provide some indication of performance.

Concepts from the textile industry may soon infiltrate thermal management in advanced packaging, in the form of manufactured spun threads and felted mats composed of single-wall carbon nanotubes (CNTs).

Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) comprise a broad category of packages - sensors, gyroscopes, accelerometers, and more - that attract attention everywhere.

Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials, Marlborough, MA

Demands for continuously smaller IC packages with increased I/O capability are requiring tighter wire-bond loop tolerances.

Underfills are used in flip chip packaging to help mitigate the effects of the large coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) mismatch between the silicon chip and the laminate circuit board.

Fluxes - the brownish, fairly liquid material that allows molten solders to wet onto other metal surfaces - have come a long way from their rather primitive SMT forbears in solder paste, wave soldering, and rework to fulfill diverse needs in the semiconductor market.

Much ado has been made over the need to wring increased performance out of the same silicon real estate and/or device structures.

Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) include a variety of miniaturized intelligent mechanical systems such as accelerometers, flow sensors, motion mirrors, and radio-frequency (RF) devices.