Category Archives: Packaging and Testing

October 4, 2007 — Integrated Sensing Systems Inc. (ISSYS) has received a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research contract from the National Science Foundation. The two-year project, “Wafer-Scale, Hermetic Packaging of MEMS-Based Systems,” is aimed toward development of a novel packaging method that will greatly simplify the packaging of MEMS and their associated electronics, the company said in a press announcement.

“This technology is highly enabling for commercialization of viable MEMS products,” Nader Najafi, president and chief executive of the Ypsilanti, Mich.-based company, said in the news release. “The practical hermetic integration of electronics and MEMS devices allows the commercialization of a variety of MEMS-based products that are currently not possible due to high cost of manufacturing or packaging problems.”

Applications include products that require the MEMS device to be in direct contact with the media, yet the electronics need to be isolated from the environment, intelligent catheters and implantable intracranial pressure (ICP) monitors for traumatic brain injury. Other potential applications include devices industrial, analytical, defense, safety, or biohazard detection.

June 21, 2007 – Recognizing that packaging and manufacturing are among the most crucial challenges facing MEMS engineers, ASM International has announced its MEMS Materials Database: Packaging Module to facilitate materials selection for MEMS packages.

Advances in packaging MEMS for manufacturability and ease-of-use have not matched advances in the devices themselves. Most MEMS require custom packaging solutions, and material selection is critical. MEMS packaging challenges addressed by the new database include: cost, size, package stresses and mechanical protection, electrical shielding and isolation, optical and thermal protection, chemical isolation, and overall hermeticity.

The database promises to help MEMS developers to:

+ Search, select, and report features to find and compare candidate materials.
+ Identify materials that optimally satisfy various mechanical and performance design requirements.
+ Select materials based on demonstrated successful application and compatibility with design parameters.
+ Create reports that compare materials and processes per user-defined criteria.

The MEMS Materials Database represents the first ASM product developed for the MEMS community. Licensing fees start at $89.

March 26, 2007 — Quantum Leap Packaging, Inc. (QLP), provider of air cavity packages for semiconductor assembly, has announced the availability of HermeTech, which it says is the industry’s first hermetic plastic package to meet JEDEC standards. With this release, the company is targeting advanced packaging applications such as image sensors, HB-LEDs, MEMS, LDMOS, and RF microwave devices.

QLP is manufacturing HermeTech plastic air cavity QFNs (quad flat no-lead packages) that maintain hermetic leak rates of less than 5×10-8 atm cc/s He, and pass full Mil Spec reliability tests. By combining its Quantech material technology and UltraSeal ultrasonic lid process, QLP has developed HermeTech QFNs that feature customizable properties, low moisture permeability and high temperature stability and promise true hermetic performance.

QLP says HermeTech combines the hermetic performance and reliability of ceramic packages with design flexibility and tailored material properties to solve longstanding packaging problems. “I see QLP’s breakthrough technology leading the next generation of semiconductor packaging,” says David Grooms, CEO of Quantum Leap Packaging.

Hermetic levels have never been achieved with organic materials, according to QLP.

SEMI Announces Competition


December 13, 2006

(December 13, 2006) SAN JOSE, CA &#151 SEMI put out a call for innovations for the fifth annual Technology Innovation Showcase (TIS) to be held in conjunction with SEMICON West 2007, July 17 &#150 19, 2007, in San Francisco. Nanotechnology, MEMS, test, assembly, packaging, and wafer processing submissions are sought by February 2, 2007.

Another Word on Nano


June 6, 2006

The day after I wrote my last editorial entitled Nano-inspiration, I attended the MEMS and Nanotechnology session at the IMAPS New England Symposium, May 16, in Boxborough, MA. There was so much discussion about nano-hype, multiple definitions of nano, how nanomaterials are made, and what you can do with them that I wished the session had occurred a few days earlier. Then I received a letter to the editor on the topic, which you’ll read in this issue of AP Semi-monthly, and decided that more needed to be said.

(June 6, 2006) SAN JOSE, CA &#8212 If you’re like most people who responded to SEMI’s survey on MEMS packaging standards, you’re not aware that SEMI has published three MEMS-related standards. Existing standards cover microscale fluidic systems, terminology, and wafer bonding. SEMI’s MEMS technical committee has identified MEMS packaging as a task force area, and standardization efforts are just beginning. Survey respondents listed cost, reliability, hermeticity, and standardization as top challenges in MEMS packaging. They rated hermeticity, reliability, external connections and package dimensions, and material specifications as areas most in need of standardization.

More than a dozen attendees of MEPTEC’s MEMS packaging symposium, held May 17-18 in San Jose, CA, met with SEMI staff at the end of the symposium to discuss hermeticity standards. Issues included defining a hermetic seal and specifying test methodology and structures, beginning with existing standards and adapting them to MEMS packages.

Your editorial on the term “nanotechnology” did not go as far as it could in highlighting the ambiguity of the current usage of the “nano” prefix. I have always grudgingly accepted the definition containing features in the 1-100-nm scale as a useful first step in describing what it is we do to a layman. I am surprised to find that the U.S. Nanotechnology Initiative has used this infantile definition in setting out guidelines for what constitutes nanotechnology.

Mar. 11, 2005 — Apogee Technology Inc., a provider of silicon-based innovations for specialized applications, announced it has signed an agreement with the University of Medicine and Dentistry New Jersey’s Laboratory for Drug Delivery to conduct research and testing on the company’s MEMS-based transdermal drug delivery device.

Apogee selected the lab to study the compatibility of representative large molecule drugs with Apogee’s transdermal solution. The device is designed to be part of an alternate delivery solution for new and existing large molecule drugs currently used to treat various conditions, such as diabetes, infectious disease, acute pain and chronic pain. Completion of preliminary studies is expected by year-end, followed by the testing of Apogee’s solution for use with selected target drugs for commercialization in 2007.

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Feb. 11, 2005 — Each year, Small Times ranks the U.S. states for their research, development and commercialization proficiency in the areas of nanotechnology, MEMS and microsystems. Last year, Michigan ranked eighth. Its 2004 report card follows. Look to Small Times’ upcoming March issue for this year’s state-by-state rankings.

March 2004 — In most respects, the two-day symposium at the University of Michigan last November resembled any other academic conference. It offered a mix of local luminaries and out-of-state nano stars giving presentations on everything from modeling to nanolithography to nanowires.

It also included a lunch with the provost at which the guest scientists discussed the institutional investments in their respective institutes, centers and labs and the opportunities that emerged as a consequence. The informal talk got the ball rolling, according to Rick Francis, an associate vice president in U-M’s research office. Ann Arbor-based U-M expects to release a road map this spring on the creation of a “virtual institute” that integrates nano research in its sciences, engineering, medical, pharmaceutical and public health schools.

Michigan ranked eighth in Small Times’ 2004 annual micro and nanotechnology rankings based on its performance in six categories, shown at right.

Sources: National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Departments of Defense, Energy and Commerce, Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Bureau of Labor Statistics, MoneyTree Survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Thomson Financial Venture Economics, National Venture Capital Association and Small Times Research. Research by Candace Stuart and David Forman, with support from Gretchen McNeely and Karen Van Antwerp.

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Michigan’s combination of research capabilities and a growing small tech industrial presence helped it scoot to eighth place this year, up a notch from 2003. Its strong showing in those two categories offset a slip in innovation and venture capital.

Michigan is adept at drawing in federal R&D money, a trait that carries through to its small tech-specific grants. Only six other states raked in more small tech research grants in 2003. But Michigan showed less success at turning its ideas into innovation. It placed 15th for winning small tech-specific Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards in 2003, and 32nd for small tech patenting in 2003.

The state is also skilled at wedding its research in MEMS and microsystems with industry needs. U-M’s engineering department contains one of the nation’s leading MEMS programs and oversees the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Wireless Integrated MicroSystems. Michigan State and Michigan Technological universities and a range of companies are among the center’s partners.

Wayne State University in Detroit also offers an engineering program with ties to industry, particularly to the auto companies that dominate the southeastern region. In a partnership with Troy-based Delphi Corp., Wayne State unveiled a new, 4,000-square-foot clean room in 2003 for MEMS R&D. The clean room is part of Wayne State’s Smart Sensors Lab, which is developing technologies for medical applications as well as automotive.

Industry-linked projects like some under way at U-M, Wayne State and the state’s university spinouts are likely to lead to patenting and coordinated development of products, according to Anthony Breitzman, vice president and chief technology officer at CHI Research Inc. “This kind of thing goes on locally,” he said. “You see not only the companies but their suppliers develop patents in lockstep. The suppliers are solving problems for the bigger companies.”

Michigan also offers incentives through industry-university-government collaborations called SmartZones and a funding resource dubbed the Technology Tri-corridor. The Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti SmartZone lists MEMS among its three strengths. The tri-corridor initiative supports emerging technologies in the life sciences, homeland security and advanced automotive sectors.

The tri-corridor program incorporates an earlier life sciences initiative that awarded biotech startups 96 awards totaling $175 million between 2000 to 2003. Those companies included the small tech companies NanoBio in Ann Arbor, Advanced Sensor Technologies Inc. in Farmington Hills and Integrated Sensing Systems Inc. in Ypsilanti.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced in her 2004 state-of-the-state address that Michigan will set aside $1 million to sustain its economic momentum in its key sectors. The funds will support a program that matches federal SBIR grants with up to $15,000 in state money.

Feb. 23, 2004 — Micralyne Inc., an Edmonton, Alberta, based MEMS manufacturer, has signed a contract worth more than $2 million to make components for chemical analysis instrumentation, according to a news release.

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Micralyne will manufacture MEMS die to be integrated into an analysis device that will marketed and sold globally. The company did not disclose the customer, but described it in the release as a “market-leading Tier 1 instrumentation company.”

June 24, 2003 — Rainier Corp., a Princeton, Mass.-based public relations and advertising agency, has launched a MEMS practice, according to a news release.

Rainier said it seeks to offer MEMS clients its decade of experience in high-tech marketing communications. Its roster includes Texas Instruments’ MEMS-based Digital Light Processing Products division and StratEdge, which makes high-performance MEMS packaging products.