Category Archives: Wafer Level Packaging

July 11, 2011 — Jan Vardaman, president and founder of TechSearch International, summarizes highlights from her SEMICON West presentation on through silicon vias (TSV) (Tuesday, July 12, 2:00-4:30PM,  Heterogeneous Integration session). "We’re finally moving from PowerPoint engineering to real engineering [with respect to TSVs,]" said Vardaman, though progress is slow and will require patience. Wafer bond/debond and wafer thinning/wafer handling are gaining the most attention, she says. And supply chain logistics responsibilities (foundries vs. outsourced semiconductor assembly and test [OSAT]) need to be worked out. Metrology tools are needed to better investigate processes and reliability and it would be nice to see more data. For more on the topic of metrology, SEMATECH is holding a session on 3D metrology at the Marriott Marquis, San Francisco, July 13, at noon. While Vardaman would like to hear more about reliability, especially at the board level, she doesn

July 8, 2011 — SET – Smart Equipment Technology – will introduce the FC300R robotic device bonding platform at SEMICON West, July 12-14 in San Francisco, CA. The FC300R performs chip-to-substrate bonding, chip-to-wafer assembly, and chip-to-chip stacking for flip chip, through silicon via (TSV), and other advanced packaging processes.

The FC300R uses a loading robot added to the base of an FC300 bonding tool to increase component handling capabilities with substrates and waffle packs/GELPAKs, which the machine can store in large quantities. The tool accommodates components from 150 x 150

July 5, 2011 — WACKER began operating several silicone-polymer production lines at its Burghausen, Germany, site, expanding production of high-purity specialty silicones, encapsulation and coating compounds, as well as UV-activated silicones. Wacker added a new cleanroom facility to the site to meet the purity standards of semiconductors, LEDs, and other applications.

The new facility meets WACKER’s novel Clean Operations principles, said Dr. Bernd Pachaly, head of the Engineering Silicones business unit. These include housing production, filling and logistics separately with airlock entrances; strict regulation on filling operations; and special stipulations regarding clothing and hygiene, air, and particle filters. The facility meets the ISO standard for class 8 cleanrooms. Production steps are all monitored and documented constantly.

The new clean-operations facility produces highly specialized LUMISIL, SEMICOSIL, and WACKER SilGel silicone products for encapsulating and coating electronic components; as well as other products for medical uses. There is also a production line for UV silicones.

Wacker Chemie AG produces chemicals for various end-use sectors, such as WACKER POLYSILICON Polysilicon for the semiconductor and photovoltaics industries and Siltronic Hyperpure silicon wafers and monocrystals for semiconductor devices. For further information, visit www.wacker.com

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July 1, 2011 — Creative Materials Inc. now manufactures electrically conductive and electrically insulating adhesives for quartz oscillator circuits, used for bonding leads and lids. The low-stress adhesives feature good thermal stability with low out-gassing. Creative Materials designed the adhesives to avoid interference with the oscillation action inside the package.

Creative Materials’ electrically conductive adhesives will be used to bond leads onto the crystal. They are said to offer small particle size, low shrinkage, high bond strength, and low resin bleed. These include 120-02 (flexible, medium viscosity, screen-printable), 110-16 (flexible, low viscosity, syringe dispensable), and 124-08A/B/C (high bond strength, good thermal cycling; 1 or 2-component).

The thermally conductive adhesives suit lid attach on the oscillator package. These products include 122-07 (B-stageable), 124-07 (better thermal cycling, B-stageable), 108-50 (low shrinkage, good thermal cycling), and 109-12 (best thermally conductivity, low shrinkage, good thermal cycling).

Crystal oscillators are used in communications and timing systems in cell phones, quartz watches, computers, and radio and sonar devices.
 
Creative Materials, Inc. makes electrically conductive inks, coatings, and adhesives. Learn more at www.creativematerials.com

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June 30, 2011 — SEMICON West, held every July in San Francisco, is a major tradeshow and conference for semiconductor manufacturing professionals. Semiconductor packaging has become a major focus in recent years, and this year, BEOL attendees can go to the head of the line for ATE Vision 2020, 3D IC standards meetings, a keynote, and multiple sessions dedicated to packaging technologies. Here’s your guide to attending SEMICON West on a packaging track.

SEMI highlights a couple sessions that attendees won’t want to miss (schedule details below): 3D in the Deep Submicron Era, Contemporary Packaging: Challenges and Solutions for 40nm and Beyond, and Heterogeneous Integration with MEMS and Sensors. The 3D session will look at dramatic developments in IC packaging — through silicon vias (TSVs) and stacked dies, and silicon interposer (2.5D) technology based upon TSVs. The session will cover design standards, test platforms, and roadmaps that link the strategies of memory, MPU, GPU and other chip manufacturers including foundries and packaging firms.

While these are exciting developments, a majority of today

June 30, 2011 — Semiconductor assembly and test services (SATS) provider Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE, TAIEX:2311) predicts that the global IC sector will face inventory adjustments in the near term. ASE will maintain its capital expenditure plan through the correction period.

Tien Wu, chief operating officer of ASE and upcoming keynoter for SEMICON West, said high semiconductor inventories will force a natural correction. The current inventory level is higher than the sector’s normal level of about 70 days.

Statistics, released in May, show that the semiconductor sector recorded 73 days of inventory for Q1 2011, up from 66 days registered for Q4 2010, Wu said, speaking at ASE’s annual general meeting. Q2 2011 inventory should also be high.

Despite higher-than-normal IC inventories, ASE will maintain its NT$23.2 billion (US$800 million) capital expenditure plan for future expansion by the end of 2011. ASE shareholders approved a proposal to allow the company to make a rights issue or issue American depository receipts.

Wu expects inventory adjustments to affect the IC industry through August at the earliest. Wu predicts ASE sales growth of about 10 percentage points higher than the industry’s average in 2011.

In 2010, ASE posted NT$188.7 billion in consolidated sales, up 120% from 2009, while its net profit rose 172% to NT$18.34 billion. The packaging company broke ground on a 6000 employee facility in 2010, expected to go on-line in November 2011. Read about ASE’s expansion here.

Asia Pulse Pty Limited points out that rival SATS provider Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL, TAIEX:2325) also predicted semiconductor sector adjustments in Q3, citing Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami-related disruption. However, SPIL chairman Bough Lin said that the global IC industry should have a better H2 2011 after inventory adjustments.

Morris Chang, chairman of foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, TAIEX:2330) cut his 2011 forecast for output growth of the global IC sector, excluding the memory chip segment, from 7% to 4%, Asia Pulse reports.

(CNA)

Copyright 2011 Asia Pulse Pty Limited

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June 28, 2011 — On Keynote Stage (Esplanade Hall), SEMICON West keynoters will share perspectives from the chip design, packaging & assembly, and research points of view. Tien Wu, ASE; Rama K. Shukla, Intel; and Luc Van den hove, imec, are the honored presenters for SEMICON West 2011.

Semicon West 2011 runs July 12-14 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Tien Wu is chief operating officer at Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE), a Taiwan-based semiconductor packaging subcontractor. Wu will speak on Tuesday, July 12 in the morning (keynote begins at 9am. Wu told Advanced Packaging several years ago at SEMICON West that "back-end is leading the industry," and that the boundary between the front- and back-end is much more determined by business than by technology. "Money, not processes, determines the difference between the front- and back-end." Read Wu’s past comments here.

Tuesday afternoon, (starting at 1:30pm), Rama K. Shukla will speak. Shukla is VP of the Intel Architecture Group.

Wednesday morning (10:00am start), Luc Van den hove, president and CEO of imec, will share the research organizations’ perspective on the microelectronics industry. Van den hove keynoted the SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium earlier in 2011, discussing materials challenges, silicon photonics, and the spread of semiconductors into new applications.

Get the details at http://semiconwest.org/SessionsEvents/Keynotes/ExecutiveSessions.

More SEMICON West previews:

June 28, 2011 – BUSINESS WIRE — NEXX Systems, advanced packaging equipment maker, completed a joint evaluation program with a principal Korean integrated device manufacturer (IDM), installing 2 300mm Stratus electrochemical deposition (ECD) systems. The IDM will use its Stratus ECD tools for wafer-level packaging (WLP) metallization processes for cutting-edge mobile products.

The manufacturer needed packaging tools that could handle high-volume manufacturing for advanced mobile devices, noted Rezwan Lateef, VP of business development and customer operations, NEXX Systems.

NEXX Systems opened a Korea subsidiary in collaboration with its sales and service agency in the region, Global Zeus. Bioh Kim is NEXX Systems’ Korea director and GM.

The Stratus production plating tool has 20 wafer plating positions. Its vertical processing technology and single, linear cell configuration enable dual-sided production plating on wafers from 50 to 200

June 28, 2011 – GLOBE NEWSWIRE — Microsemi Corporation (Nasdaq:MSCC) packaged a 9gigabit (Gb) DDR3 SDRAM memory device in a single plastic ball grid array (PBGA) offered as a compact x72 dual in-line memory module (DIMM). The compact package suits mission-critical applications requiring up to 4GByte memory densities in smaller, faster packages with extended-temperature ranges.

The commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) plastic BGA DDR3 device is designed to reduce board space compared to discrete memory devices or chipscale memory packages and other single-die packages  (30% space savings and 21% reduced I/O routing). The memory devices also streamline I/O routing and reduce component count and placements with good signal integrity, Microsemi says.

The BGA measures 20.5 x 21.5mm (375 form factor). It supports data rates of 800, 1,066 and 1,333 megabits per second (Mb/s) on a 1.5V power supply.

Microsemi’s high-speed memories use a 4ns-prefetch architecture with an interface that allows two data words to be transmitted per clock cycle. The devices can be ruggedized and processed for tamper resistance. The company plans to offer a low-profile option that will be footprint-compatible with the current 375 PBGA package.

"A PBGA package is similar to an FCBGA package in that each uses a silicon die. The principal difference is that a PBGA utilizes a wire bonded die while the FCBGA uses a flip chip. As a result, the PBGA almost always incorporates fewer I/Os than the FCBGA…" Read more

Microsemi Corporation (Nasdaq:MSCC) offers semiconductors for aerospace, defense and security; enterprise and commercial; and industrial and alternative energy markets. Learn more at www.microsemi.com. 

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June 27, 2011 — Endicott Interconnect Technologies released an update on its defense electronics development and production and sustainment contracts, which totalled $101 million from the Defense Department from 2010 to present.

EI’s work with the Defense Department uses "some of the most advanced electronic packaging" available, said Eric Hills, vice president — business development/program office at EI.

EI said it was awarded development and production contracts totaling $89.4 million for the continued development of high-performance computing systems for the Defense Department throughout 2010. EI was awarded two hardware sustainment contracts in 2011, valued at $2.1 million and $9.5 million. The latter is a 10-year contract.

Since the initial contract awards in 2008 and 2009, EI has conducted research and development of system architecture and advanced, high-speed electronics packaging technologies, including building engineering hardware to support design verification and system capability enhancements. A production contract for this new system was made to EI at the end of 2010.

EI, based in Endicott, provides high-performance electronic packaging solutions for customers in the defense, aerospace, communications, computing, semiconductor, advanced test equipment and medical markets. Learn more at http://www.endicottinterconnect.com/index.php

Past EI defense news:

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