Apologies for the delay in covering the IMAPS device packaging conference this year. I normally get access to the manuscripts as I am leaving the show to insure timely coverage. This year that was not possible. IMAPS’ move of their office to the RTP NC area is causing further delays (they will soon be my neighbors), so I await the conference CD like the rest of the attendees.
Personnel Changes in Taiwan
The word from Taiwan is that Doug Yu, who has been responsible for the R&D of exploratory technologies including FEOL, BEOL and 3D IC has been refocused on just packaging, especially their CoWoS 2.5D offering. IFTLE thinks this move shows that TSMC is serious about expanding this business within their company.
We also hear that Ho Ming Tong currently General Manager and Chief R&D Officer at ASE, who has been a strong supporter of 3DIC, and is actually credited with coining the phrase 2.5D, is moving further up the corporate ladder at ASE.
Congrats to both gentlemen!
The Current and Coming Use of Glass in WLP
We have recently discussed Asahi Glass entering the 2.5D glass interposer market [see IFTLE 141, "100GB Wide IO memory; AGC GlassInterposers; Nvidia talks stacked memory"] and the general use of glass interposers for 2.5D fabrication [ see IFTLE 54 ,"2011 ECTC and GlassInterposers"
Yole Developpement’s Amandine Pizzagalli has just issued a report "Glass Substrates for Semiconductor manufacturing," where she has examined the potential applications for glass in wafer level packaging and reported on the current and projected market size. A sample of the report can be found here [link]. The functions that were examined include: carriers for thinning in 2.5/3D; capping layers for CMOS image sensors, wafer level optics, structural substrates and wafer level capping.
A grid of application vs function would look something like this.

The market breakdown by end application is shown below with MEMs and image sensing being responsible for over 50 percent of the market for more than the next five years..

Total market glass market is reported to be $158M in 2012. Schott (Germany) , Tecnisco (Japan), PlanOptik (Germany), Bullen(USA) and Corning (USA) reportedly share 70 percent of the market, driven mainly by demand for WL capping [CIS application (see below)].
CS wafer level glass capping is shown below .


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