XMC, a 300mm semiconductor manufacturing company, today announces it has shipped over 100 million Backside Illumination (BSI) CMOS Image Sensor (CIS) units. All of the BSI CIS units are high end products ranging from 5 to 23 mega pixels by using wafer bonding technology. In addition, the state of the art 3D wafer stacking technology developed by XMC for BSI CIS has also entered volume production now. It indicates that XMC has become one of the leading BSI CIS and 3D IC manufacturing companies in the world.

XMC is dedicated to developing advanced specialty IC manufacturing technologies and providing its customers with high performance and cost effective total solutions. The R&D of wafer-level BSI technology started in the second half of 2012. It took over one year’s joint effort with our partner to reach mass production at the beginning of 2014. A year later, the more advanced 3D wafer stacking, based on the BSI technology, has also been successfully developed. It is a wafer stacking technology that not only bonds two functional wafers (of different process technologies), but also establishes the electrical connection between the two different chips in the bonded wafers. The technology fully realizes vertical wafer integration and improves both chip reliability and efficiency.

“With the offering of the advanced wafer stacking technology, XMC enables its partners to enlarge the share of high-end CIS market,”Dr. Shaoning Mei, CTO at XMC said, “We will further enhance our 3D IC expertise on the basis of 3D wafer stacking technology, by which we can achieve high performance and low power through directly connecting the core parts of two chips. 3D IC is expected to be an important technology to keep us on track with Moore’s Law. It is also the key strength for XMC to establish its leadership in 3D IC industry.”