By Dr. Phil Garrou, Contributing Editor
Continuing our look at the 2017 IMAPS Device Packaging Conference (DPC) held annually in AZ.
Prismark
Brandon Prior of Prismark examined “the Changing Landscape in the Back End.” The Prismark punchline is that even though the industry is maturing and entering a period of consolidation and slower growth, “…packaging technology remains critical to delivery of semiconductor and sensor functionality”
Below are some of the system trends that they report:
– 0.4mm pitch components have been mainstream now for > 10 years due to package test below 0.4mm SMT processes, equipment and materials are not ready for ).3mm
– 0.8mm thick packages are in flagship smartphones (WLCSP,QFN, PoP, FCCSP) Users are asking for 0.6mm; EMI shielding in the package is becoming common.
– SiP use is growing not only in Rf solutions due to smaller footprint and lower total cost potential
– WLCSP has now been commercial for nearly two decades. Both OSATS and foundries have significant capacity. Mobile phones and tablets most significant users. Concerns about cost, reliability and assembly remain.
– FOWLP receiving significant interest. Products are developing for solutions based on: single die, PoP and Multidie with passives as shown below.
While panel based FOWLP remains of great interest at companies like: STATS/JCET, ASE, DECA, PTI, SEMCO and Unimicron, imaging equipment players (Rudolph, ORC and Ushio) reportedly have not shipped any tools. DECA an SEMCO continue to lead in promoting panel based technology.
A very interesting slide is shown below. It indicates that Prismark sees 80% of value add growth coming from wafer based packaging. [for someone like IFTLE who was promoting WLCSP back in the late 1990s, while at Dow Chemical, when the popular response was that wafer based packaging was absurd, this is great vindication!]
Amkor
Ron Huemoeller of Amkor examined “Heterogeneous Integration: Packaging for the Future”. Huemoeller indicated that creating value at the packaging level is dependent on (a) smaller form factor, (b) enhanced performance, (c) modularization and (d) high reliability.
Amkor indicates that the high end packaging market can be categorized by application as follows:
Also of interest is the depiction of key technology drivers by Industry segment:
DOW Chemical
Speaking of my former employer (been gone since 2004), Eric Huenger discussed “Advanced Materials and Interconnect Technologies for Next Gen Smart Devices”. Although you may have seen it before, I still enjoy seeing the slide shown below which depicts the materials necessary to develop todays high end packaging. It’s good to see Dow with such a broad portfolio. That’s exactly what some of us were pushing for > 15 years ago.
From a historical perspective those that drove electronics in Dow Chemical in the early years (1985-2005) consisted of the following folks:
For all the latest in Advanced Packaging, stay linked to IFTLE…
