In a recent Yole webcast, Eric Mournier took a market look at thin wafer bonding and processing.

Wafer thinning is required in a number of high growth microelectronic areas.

Thin (< 100μm) and even ultra-thin semiconductor wafers (< 40μm) are in demand for:

— Reduced package thickness
— Better heat dissipation / thermal management
— Increased TSV density

This brings up issues since the thinned wafers are more vulnerable to stress and the dies can warp and break.

Yole sees the following wafer thinning roadmap:

By 2017 memory will dominate the thinned wafer application space:

The major players will be the expected memory "Big 3" of Samsung, Hynix, and Micron:

They see greater than 10M wafers going through temporary bonding in 2017, which would be approximately 8% of total thinned wafers. The power and 3DIC markets will drive temporary bonding on carrier.

This will result in a temporary bonder / debonder market of $250M in 2017.

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