By Dr. Phil Garrou, Contributing Editor

In IFTLE 300, we commented that the imminent end to scaling will force changes in how we approach the development of new integrated circuits and systems.

Subramanian Iyer, ex IBM fellow, retired from IBM when the chip business was sold off to Global Foundries. He is now the Distinguished Chancellor’s Professor in the EE Dept. at UCLA and Director of the Center of Heterogeneous Integration and Performance Scaling (or CHIPS for short). The CHIPS mission is to interpret and implement Moore’s Law to include all aspects of heterogeneous systems and develop architectures, methodologies, designs, components, materials and manufacturable integration schemes that will shrink system footprint and improve power and performance. Let’s look at his concept of for where the industry should be going.

In the July 2016 issue of IEEE Trans on CPMT, Iyer put pen to paper ( or should we say “fingers to keyboard”) and has laid out the master plan for CHIPS in his article “Heterogeneous Integration for Performance and Scaling.”

Iyer contends that Moore’s law has so far relied on the aggressive scaling of CMOS silicon features. This in turn resulted in a dynamic system-on-chip (SoC) approach, where progressively more function has been integrated on a single die. While scaling on chip has increased >1000X, the integration of multiple dies on packages and boards has scaled by a factor of 3 – 5X. The current slowing of semiconductor scaling [discussed in IFTLE 300] will bring a focus on heterogeneous integration and system-level scaling. This transformation is already under way with 3-D stacking of dies and will evolve to make heterogeneous integration the backbone of sustaining Moore’s law in the years ahead.

While the SoC approach has moved us forwards, a single chip does not make a system. In order to build a system, multiple chips such as processors, memory chips, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), transceivers, power regulators, and so on need to be interconnected. Traditionally, this has been done using a printed circuit board (PCB).

Chips are typically packaged before being mounted on the board. While it is true that the package connects the chip to the rest of the system, it does so very inefficiently. For instance, contacted gate pitches in the 14-nm node are about 40 nm, through the hierarchical wiring system, we increase that pitch up step-by-step until, at the upper most wiring level, it is a few micrometers. The C4 bumps then increase this pitch to about 150 μm. The BGA connections to the board take this further to 400 – 600 μm. In essence, to connect two chips the interconnections of chip 1 must fan out to a PCB board pitch and then fan back in to chip 2 pitch , thus causing the inefficiency . Silicon has scaled by over a factor of 1000 in the last 50 years, while packages and boards have scaled by at most a factor of 5.

Iyer contends that with increasing demands on the BW between the chips and the inability to increase the number of physical connections between the chips, serial links need to operate individually at higher and higher data rates. These higher rates mean higher frequency signals carried by the traces on the board and significantly larger noise levels and cross talk between adjacent channels. Consequences of this include:

1) The power to transmit higher frequency signals through SerDes goes up exponentially with data rate.

2) The SerDes circuits themselves become more complex to design and take up more area. modern SoCs may sometime devote almost 25% of their area to SerDes, and in some cases, an even greater fraction of chip power is allocated to SerDes function.

Approaches to System Scaling and Heterogeneous Integration

Iyer proposes Eliminating the Package and directly bonding multiple bare dies to an interconnect fabric (IF) made of silicon. He notes that the first steps in this direction have been silicon interposers but argues that this is not the ultimate solution since an interposer adds cost and complexity by adding an extra level to the overall package. What Iyer is proposing is “to go a step further and transform the interposer into the board”.

He proposes replacing the current epoxy glass PWB board with silicon. This silicon board would be a wafer on which have been processed several levels of fine pitch wiring with the top-most wiring level matching the top chip wire levels with landing pads of similar dimensions that can connect to other die that have been attached with precision alignment (0.5-μm overlay). He calls this wafer the silicon interconnect fabric (Si-IF). Electrical connections between the rigid flat die and the Si-IF will be made by thermal compression bonding. While technology at this fine scale is not available today, Iyer believes it possible in the near future. He believes that two features of this approach make it feasible:

1) the use of small die (a few millimeters on a side)

2) the fact that both the die and IF are made of relatively thick silicon, are flat and have matched CTEs.

Iyer contends that computing is evolving to a more heterogeneous architecture with a combination of special purpose processors, accelerators, and FPGAs which make this Si-IF integration scheme very attractive, since one can synthesize such systems from a variety of off-the-shelf components. In the case of mobile systems and the so-called IoT, heterogeneity is the key requirement. One can integrate analog components, sensors, MEMS, batteries, supercapacitors, and so on as needed. Overall, they expect that this approach will allow significant reduction in overall board footprint.

Iyer has listed the following requirements for such technology to come to pass.

1) Integrated Design System: Today, chips, packages, and boards are all designed separately and almost independently. This will need to become a lot more integrated. In addition, while, today, we do electrical, thermal, and mechanical design more or less independently, these three views of the system will also have been integrated.

Such a system will require significantly more understanding of the interactions between these 3 views and the development of a significantly more sophisticated set of tools.

2) New Design for Test and Repair Methodologies: As rework is no longer an option, and die-level testing will be limited in scope, the component chips will have to test themselves to a large extent. While technologies to do this exist, they will need to be adapted to bare die.

3) Interface Standardization: Our approach allows us to have a large number of inter die connections and this allows us to parallelize the connections and have simpler interfaces. However, this approach needs to be adopted universally. We believe that the standardization of slower and easier to build parallel interfaces is more easily achieved than serial interfaces.

4) Power Delivery and Thermal Management: In the case of high-end systems, one would need to deliver ∼1 kW of power at different voltages. This will require integrated power management techniques, and the use of features, such as Hi-Q inductors, buck convertors, and power switches, than can either be components attached to the IF or integrated into the Si-IF. Removing the generated heat is another challenge. One mitigating factor in the use of the Si-IF is that the silicon itself is a good thermal conductor and can be an integral part of the heat-sinking solution. The die themselves may have integrated heat sinks made, for example, with silicon fluidic channels or micro machined fins.

5) Structural Properties of Silicon: While the ability to process silicon as an IF is second to none, care must be exercised in wafer handling. Fortunately, silicon-processing equipment has evolved to accommodate this

6) Cost: It has been argued that silicon is expensive and organic materials would be more cost effective. If we need fine pitch interconnects, then in practice, material cost will be about 10% of the finished product cost. Processing the fine pitch interconnects dominates the cost. In fact, it will be very expensive to fabricate fine pitch (sub-10-μm pitch) interconnects on organic

substrates; while fully depreciated silicon fabs can do this easily and more cost effectively on silicon. There are additional benefits of silicon, such as integrated passives and active IFs. The silicon solar cell substrate suppliers have developed the so-called metallurgical grade Si that is cost competitive.

While the challenges are enormous, so too are the payoffs. When compared with the challenges and costs of continuing to shrink minimum features on a die, he believes “… the value proposition of what we have proposed here is solid”.

 

For all the latest in Advanced IC Packaging, stay linked to IFTLE…

By Dr. Phil Garrou, Contributing Editor

The 2015 ITRS Roadmap

The 2015 International Technology Roadmap, was released earlier this summer by the SIA (Semiconductor Industry Association). It can be accessed here [link].

If there were any practitioners left who were still denying that scaling has come to an end, this report drove a stake into their heart. No longer snickering at the “conspiracy theory”, all major organizations have now accepted the reality of a future without scaling. Even Popular Mechanics is reporting this as a major event [link].

As REM would say :

“It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine”

Some will still argue that the discussion has been about Moore’s Law, not scaling. They will argue that Moore’s law simply predicts a doubling of transistor density within a given integrated circuit, not the size or performance of those transistors. To me this is just semantics. First of all More’s Law is not a Law. It is an observation. Secondly, we all know that Moore’s Law and scaling, to most in our industry had become synonymous over the years.

In the recent IEEE Spectrum article “Transistors Will Stop Shrinking in 2021, Moore’s Law Roadmap Predicts” the authors note “After 2021, the report forecasts, it will no longer be economically desirable for companies to continue to shrink the dimensions of transistors in microprocessors. Instead, chip manufacturers will turn to other means of boosting density, namely turning the transistor from a horizontal to a vertical geometry and building multiple layers of circuitry, one on top of another.” [link]

In fact the ITRS changed its predictions from their 2014 report, when they said that miniaturization would continue until at least 2028. The following figure (from the IEEE Spectrum article) very clearly points out the new ITRS conclusion.

This will be the last ITRS roadmap put together by the Semiconductor Industry Association, which ends a 20+ year effort that began in the US and expanded to include the rest of the world. Citing “waning industry participation” which was to be expected as one after another major players stopped building fabs for the latest nodes. The technical difficulty and costs associated with leading edge fabs has resulted in significant consolidation as all readers of IFTLE are well aware. Today, there are basically just four major players left: Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries.

To some the shocker was probably IBM getting out of semi production. Back in 2009 I gave a presentation to a group of Govt officials who told me not to worry about on shore procurement because “IBM will always be around.” My response was “No, that’s incorrect; they will be out of the IC business soon because a $1B chip fab business cannot support building $5B factories.” They laughed it off and ignored the comment. I’m sure they are not laughing now!

Paolo Gargini, chair of the ITRS, astutely commented that chip buyers and designers—companies such as Apple, Google, and Qualcomm—are the ones now dictating the requirements for future chip generations, not the IDM’s that we all grew up with.

IFTLE readers know that this issue has been out there for quite awhile now, for instance at the 2015 IEEE ISSCC (International Solid-State Circuits Conference) Intel detailed results for its future 10nm manufacturing process. They stated that “10nm looks like the end of silicon scaling, to achieve 7nm, a III/V material will be required.”

So, where does this leave us?

The ITRS report predicts the industry will move away from FinFET ~ 2019, towards “gate-all-around transistor” technology. A few years later, transistors will use nanowires and become vertical devices. By 2024 they predict we will be facing a thermal limit which will usher in microfluidic channels to increase the effective surface area for heat transfer.

Is this all come to pass? As Yogi Berra used to say “The hardest things to predict are those that have not happened yet.”

It is clear that solutions being predicted by the ITRS front end experts are certainly front end solutions. As a reader of IFTLE you know that I have been predicting a period of increased focus in packaging. The heretofore front end equipment companies and IC fabs like TSMC, UMC and Global have certainly bought into this theory as 2.5D, 3D, fan in and fan out have become their new buzz words.

So this explains why the REM song fits how I feel now. It may be the end of the world as we have known it…but I feel fine because packaging is now, assuming it’s new position on the forefront or microelectronics. Now that manpower and emphasis have shifted to packaging solutions to customize products, I think we have only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of technological innovation.

This is IFTLE 300, which means I have been sharing information and thoughts with you for 6 years. Thank you all for your continuing support of this blog.

Now, taking this opportunity to update a few things:

1) Lester the Lightbulb

For those long time readers of IFTLE still interested in my Lester the lightbulb “non scientific” lifetime testing [link] here is where we stand, exactly 5 years (Aug 2011) into our test.

Our LED bulb is still burning, but so is our 25 cent “Lester the lightbulb” incandescent bulb. Yes that is correct, the incandescent is still functioning after 5 years with approx. the same burn time and on/off cycling in the same area of the house. The big looser in all this is the compact florescent (CFL) which has burned out 3 times, that’s right this mercury containing technology (how can anyone call this green ?) is now on bulb #4. A pic of the bulb #3 burnout is shown below. It gave off a puff of white smoke that probably shortened my life due to mercury vapor inhalation. Lucky it didn’t start a fire.

2) Hannah and Maddie

Early on I told you that you would have to put up with pics of my granddaughters every “now and then” because “that’s what grandparents do.” It is now “now and then” once again.

 

3) The IFTLE Tag Line

Since its inception “Insights from the leading Edge” has intentionally put a lot of emphasis on 2.5 / 3D. It has been obvious that if this technology were to take root, it would be a paradigm shift in how we do packaging. IFTLE felt the community needed constant updates on were things stood. More than a decade has now gone by since the first articles appeared proposing we mainstream 3DIC with TSV. The first real products have now appeared in FPGAs, CMOS image sensors and stacked memory. It has clearly become one of the arrows in the packaging quiver. Will prices come down and its applications proliferate? Only time will tell.

Starting with IFTLE 301, my tag line will simply become “For all the latest in advanced IC packaging, stay linked to IFTLE.” IFTLE will certainly still cover advances in 2.5 / 3D although not with the special emphasis placed on these topics in the past.

How everyone has enjoyed their summer, I need to go off now and decide on content for IFTLE 301.

..…….It’s the end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine!…………….

By Dr. Phil Garrou, Contributing Editor

Continuing our look at IEEE ECTC 2016:

Siliconware – Die Stacking and Integration Options with TSV Based Si Interposers

At the recent IEEE ECTC Conference in Las Vegas, Mike Ma of Siliconware compared various die stacking and integration options with TSV Si interposers. From his perspective there are four main stacking platforms for 2.5D IC in advanced packaging. They are shown in the figures below.

In the first method known as Chip on Chip (CoC) on substrate the silicon interposer is fully processed and then multiple active chips are stacked on the silicon interposer, followed by assembly of chip module on the substrate.

The interposer is diced and attached to a silicon carrier which is coated with temporary adhesive film. The carrier provides handling and warpage control capability, i.e. the silicon interposer warpage can reportedly be controlled to within 10um during high reflow peak temperature. After that, the top die can be sequentially attached onto interposer with flux and joined together via mass reflow then followed by an underfilling process. Then the silicon carrier is de-bonded and the individual chip module attached onto blue tape film frame and ready for substrate assembly just as usual traditional FCBGA process.

In the second method known as Chip on Substrate (CoS), the silicon interposer is fully processed with TSV, metal layers, u-bumps, Backside Via Reveal (BVR) and C4 bumps. The processed silicon interposer is then assembled on the substrate followed by assembly of the multiple active chips onto the interposer.

In CoS, the interposer, ( ~ 100um thick) is die bonded to an organic substrate followed by assembly of top multiple active chips. If the substrate warpage is opposite the interposer (interposer warped up and substrate warped down is usual) , there are risks of electrically open or short failures happened after die bonding process because C4 bump height can’t overcome the gap change between TSI and substrate during the die bonding thermal excursion. Thermal compression bonding (TCB) is used to keep a stable gap between the interposer and the substrate during the die bonding process. In addition, Non-Conductive Paste (NCP) or Anisotropic Conductive Paste (ACP) are used.

Chip on Wafer before TSI backside process (CoW_first) involves attaching the top active chips on front side micro-pads of silicon interposer before the silicon interposer backside bumping process.

After micro bump bonding, underfilling and molding the wafers are ground down to expose the chip tops. The wafers are then flipped and temporarily bonded to a support wafer, the interposer vias exposed and bumped. The modules are then de-bonded from the carrier to a tape ring. Finally, the modules are FC BGA assembled on the organic BGA substrates

In the Chip on Wafer after TSI backside process (CoW last) single or multiple top dies are attached to the interposer wafer after the interposer has been fully processed including front side u-bumps process, backside via revealing process, backside re-distribution layer and final C4 or Cu pillar bumping process.

After interposer is prepared to receive chips to top surface, it is flipped and supported on a carrier for backside reveal, RDL and bumping. It is then flipped onto a second carrier and he chips mounted, underfilled and molded as before.

Comparing to the CoW first process with TSV, die bonding assembly portions are the same, but there are differences in the interposer fabrication. Instead of completing micro-bumps process first, RDL and PSV are implemented first and followed by UBM process. Since TSV-less platform has no interposer in its final form, the carrier can be either glass or silicon. After the carrier bonding process, instead of the usual backside reveal process, the TSV-less interposer will be partially removed by mechanical grinding followed by wet etching to completely remove silicon portion and stop on the remaining passivation layers. The passivation layer is then patterned to expose contact areas for further C4 bumps. Further assembly including the chip module on substrate processes are the same as described for CoW first.

Ma compared the chip stacking options in the chart below.

Editorial correction: In IFTLE 298 IFTLE inadvertently assigned credit for the “20um Pitch Thermo Compression Copper Pillar Bonding” work to IMEC instead of rightful authors at IME. This should have been corrected by now, but we did want to offer our apologies for this error.

For all the latest in 3DIC and other advanced packaging, stay linked to IFTLE…

By Dr. Phil Garrou, Contributing Editor

Continuing our look at IEEE ECTC 2016:

IME – Thermo Compression Bonding of 20µ Pitch Copper Pillar Bump for 3DIC Stacking

Throughput is limiting the adoption of 3D IC stacking processes although 3D IC has many advantages in shorter communication lines, lower electrical parasitic and lower package footprint. Thermal compression bonding (TCB) of a chip stack done one by one, it takes long cycle time to complete a 300mm wafer. Typical TCB bonding with bump pitch of 50-100μm takes 14-16 sec per chip and more than 22 hours for a 300mm wafer with 1440 dies x 4 layer stacking. A significant improvement on the throughput is needed for high volume manufacturing.

IME has developed a 20μm pitch micro-bump array assembly process with throughput of 1200 UPH (or 3 sec/chip) and bonding accuracy <2um by using two-step C2W bonding. The C2W is carried out in two steps where in the first step chips are temporary tacked on the wafer with planarized wafer level underfill, and in the second step, fully populated tacked chips on wafer are permanently bonded by using pressurized gas in a gang bond process. The gang bonder maintains chuck at constant bonding temperature. This two-step C2W process provides a new approach to solve the major concerns of the two step C2W bonding: (1) chips shifting during gang bonding, (2) pillar height variation causes gang bonding force non-uniform distribution among chips and (3) fine pitch (<30μm) solder bridging causing electrically short.

A traditional gang bonder uses metal piston press on the top wafer but sine copper pillar bump heights are not uniform enough, a soft material layer is added on top of the chips to absorb chip height variations as shown below.

But the soft layer material and Si wafer have different CTEs, thus expanding differently during thermal processing . This non-uniform expansion causes horizontal force on chips resulting in chip misalignment. To overcome the chip shifting issue, a gas pressure bonder is used for gang bonding as shown below.

This solves the pillar height variations without chip shifting.

IBM Zurich – All Copper Interconnect from Nanoparticle Sintering

IBM Zurich continued their reporting on the use of copper nano particles (nps) to form all-Cu flip chip interconnects based on pressureless low temperature sintering (~ 200 C).

It is generally agreed that an increase in current density is required to support the reduction in transistor size and supply voltage as well as 3D integration of integrated circuits. However, the current capacity in solder-based interconnects is limited due to electromigration. It is generally accepted that all-Cu interconnects should result in electrical interconnects with a higher current capacity.

Fully Cu interconnects can be formed by thermocompression bonding (TCB) of two flat Cu surfaces at high temperatures (350 C) and pressures. It is also known that the use of nanoparticles (nPs) at the bonding interface reduces the required temperature and pressure needed to form an interconnect, while also allowing for less stringent requirements for surface roughness.

In the IBM process, a Cu paste is applied between Cu pillars and Cu pads in a standard flip chip bonder. The assembly is performed at room temperature with a controlled low force. The interconnects are subsequently formed by sintering the Cu nPs in the paste at 200 °C in a batch oven under a reducing formic acid atmosphere.

However, large differences in electrical and mechanical properties of the tested sintered Cu foils compared to bulk Cu results as shown below. It is believed this is due to the porosity present in these nano copper interconnects. The shear strength of the nano copper interconnects was also significantly lower than standard Sn/Ag non lead joints [ 19 =/-5 MPa vs 65-75 +/- 10 MPa]

Attempts to use a bi modal distribution of nano and micro copper particles did not materially affect these results.

SK Hynix – Characterization of Stacked Memory

The use of tremendous number of through TSVs and micro-bumps in a stacked package is a major worry to its manufacturers and users. DRAM chips with TSVs are thin and its micro-bump interconnection can be affected by the process conditions and materials selection. Copper, widely used for via filling, may bring about interconnect failures by Cu pop-up due to higher CTE than Si and transistor failures by its contamination into silicon lattices. Micro-bump joints are also of interest in terms of reliability. Thermal-compression bonding (TCB) is a common way to stack up multiple chips with TSVs and micro-bumps but insufficient bonding time can lead abnormal bump joints and various failure modes such as non-wet, brittle intermetallic compound (IMC) formation, bump cracking, head-in-pillar (HiP) joints etc.

Thermal characterization is also important in TSV stacked chip packages. High performance devices such as HBM packages need to be thermally evaluated. Any polymer layers between stacked chips may impede thermal flow and thus raise the junction temperature of each slice.

Fault isolation techniques are required to identify and correct any failure modes present. Options are compared in the table below.

For all the latest in 3DIC and other advanced packaging, stay linked to IFTLE…

 

By Dr. Phil Garrou, Contributing Editor

Continuing our look at the 2016 ECTC Conference:

TSMC – UBM Free Fan In WLCSP

TSMC discussed their UFI (UBM-Free Integration) Fan-In WLCSP technology which they claim enables large die fine pitch packages.

Development of low-cost WLCSP for large die with high I/O count is desired for broadening its applications. Reliability issues including solder cracking and high chip warpage are known to be the main challenges for extending the die size of conventional WLCSP to more than 5×5 mm² with ball pitch smaller than 350 um.

TSMC has discovered that by controlling the maximum strain location and optimizing materials, chip warpage and the stress between Si and the PCB can be reduced which improves both component and board-level reliabilities of WLCSP packages. Packages as large as 10.3×10.3 mm² with both 400 and 350 um ball pitches have been developed.

UBM is used as an interfacial layer between the metal pad of the integrated circuit and the solder ball. The formation of UBM/solder intermetallic compounds (IMC) limits the board level reliability of the package due to the poor mechanical robustness of IMCs. When the die size is increased, stress increases which promotes cracking at the UBM/solder ball interface.

TSMC claims their UFI WLCSP fabrication cost is lower than conventional WLCSPs due to the elimination of the UBM. Removal of the UBM also reduces the thickness of the package by 30%.

The figure below compares the structures of a standard WLCSP vs the TSMC UFI WLCSP. In the UFI WLCSP, the solder balls are directly mounted to the Cu RDL followed by the polymeric PL (protection layer which secure the balls.

Very similar removal of UBM and subsequent thickening of the copper pad has been reported before by Amkor in 2010 [link]

TSMC simulation results showed the solder joint fatigue life decreases with increasing die sizes for both UFI and the conventional WLCSP. Predicted solder ball fatigue life was found to increases with decreasing die thickness. The authors suggest that decreasing the die thickness not only reduces the thermal expansion difference between the die and the PCB, but also causes the die to bend more under thermal loading. In addition, simulation results imply that solder joint creep strain for solder mask defined (SMD) structures is 72% higher than for non solder mask defined (NSMD) structures because of its reduced flexible solder joint height and the constraint of the solder mask. Thus they concluded that it is better to use NSMD type of PCB for UFI WLCSP. The use of NSMD structures to increase reliability has been known since the work of Bell Labs Ejim [ref]

TI Ejim et. al., “Reliability performance and failure mode of high I/O thermally enhanced ball grid array packages” Electronics Manufacturing Technology Symposium, 1998, p.323 – 332.

The UFI WLCSP passes all component-level tests and exhibited board-level thermal cycle life that is 1.4 and 2.3 times longer than that of the conventional WLCSP in terms of the first failure and the Weibull distribution, respectively. 10mm UFI WLCSP have passed component-level reliability tests suchas TCB1000, uHAST96 and HTS1000, and board-level reliability tests of TCG500 and drop tests. 

To demonstrate the possibility of higher interconnect density, they fabricated UFI- WLCSP with multiple RDL layers. The package with two RDL layers had die size of 10.3 x 10.3 mm² and ball pitch of 350 um. The structure is shown below. Again such structures passed all component level reliability testing.

Tohoku University – Interconnect Impact on 20um thick DRAM Chips

The effect of thermo-mechanical stress originating from CuSn μ-bumps and Cu TSVs on the retention characteristics of 20- μm-thick, vertically stacked DRAM memory chips. They determine that there is 50% probability that data retention period decreases by 47% for the DRAM chip having thickness value of 20 μm as compared to the retention period of 200 μm-thick DRAM chip.

Back-end-of-line (BEOL) processes on ultra-thin dies/wafers might cause severe degradation to device performance, due to deteriorated mechanical strength and lattice defects, back-side metal contamination, thermo-mechanical stress caused by TSVs and μ-bumps, local mechanical stress

induced on active Si near m-bump region, etc. They the thermos-mechanical stress present in the DRAM dies with thickness values varying from 200 μm down to 20 μm using micro-laser Raman spectroscopic techniques.

Retention time data obtained for a 50 μm-thick DRAM die at two different positions respectively 15.5 μm and 0 μm from the KOZ of TSV. Before annealing the stacked die, we observed similar retention time values for both the macros. While after annealing at 300 °C, irrespective of position they observed reduction in DRAM retention time at the area closer to the KOZ.

Upon reducing down the DRAM chip thicknesses to 20 μm from 200 μm, the retention time is nearly halved at the cumulative probability of 50 %. After annealing at 300 C, a compressive stress value of -200 MPa caused by Cu-TSVs was found as the remnant stress at the periphery of the keep-out-zone, and faded quickly by moving away from the keep–out-zone. Retention time deterioration was found to be influenced by the thermo-mechanical stress caused by TSVs. A large amount of tensile stress was induced on the back-side of DRAM chip at right above the CuSn μ-bump region.

Brewer Science – Temporary Bonding Materials

IMEC, Brewer Science and Suss gave a presentation on the status of temporary bonding materials.

The first-generation product was WaferBOND® HT-10.10 thermoplastic bonding material. The debonding approach was based on the re-melt of the bonding material at elevated temperature and mechanical slide-off of the carrier. The technique poses some challenges including:

• Debonding is usually performed at an elevated temperature, in the range of 200°C or higher, which prevents the integration of low-melting-point solder materials.
• Shear force increases with the carrier slide-off speed.

The second-generation product ZoneBOND® 5150 is based on a room temperature debonding. A short chemical dissolution of the bonding material on the wafer edge is required before mechanical debonding. The thin wafer is put on dicing tape, ensuring mechanical support throughout the process. The carrier substrate is then removed mechanically in a perpendicular direction as opposed to the thermal slide debonding approach.

To further reduce the process cost, a third generation of materials, BrewerBOND® 305 , has been explored. They have eliminated the need for dual zones on the carrier substrates . Thus debonding no longer requires any chemical treatment reportedly simplifying the process and resulting in a cost reduction of 25%. A summary of the three generations of processes and key challenges can be found in the table below.

For all the latest on 3DIC and other advanced packaging, stay linked to IFTLE…