IFTLE 42 IMAPS Device Packaging Conference – Fan Out and Embedded Packaging

Ft. McDowell AZ was once again the site of the annual IMAPS Global Business Council Meeting and Device Packaging Conference. [For reports on last years conference see PFTLE 123,125,126]

Fan out and Embedded Packaging

Andy Strandjord and Linda Ball put on an excellent panel session on fan out and embedded technology.

John Hunt (ASE), moderator Linda Ball (Freescale), moderator Andy Strandjord (Pac Tech), Thorstern Meyer (Intel Wireless [formerly Infineon]),Tom Strothman (STATSChipPAC), Lars Boettcher (Fraunhofer IZM), Navjot Chhabra (Freescale)

Thorsten Meyer one of the developers of the Ifineon eWLB fan out technology informed the audience that his group is now part of the Intel purchase of the Infineon wireless business. They are now the stand alone business “Intel Mobile Communications” Infineon retains rights to non wireless applications. Anyone wanting to license the technology moving forward will have to license from both parties.

Navjot Chhabra (recently from the Sematech ultra lowK program) is now Director of the Freescale RCP fanout technology. They are currently running a 200 mm engineering line while licensee Nepes has a 30 mm line running in Singapore. [see IFTLE 25, “IMAPS Part 2: Advanced Packaging] He indicates that qualifications for “…industrial and automotive products are ongoing”

Meyer also reveled that IZM had licensed their embedding technology (shown below) to Infineon.

Tom Strothman of STATSChipPAC indicated that eWLB is today less costly than FcBGA. STATS is currently running a 300 mm line for production of eWLB.

The panel made the interesting comment that both the fan out and embedded technologies were capable of 0.3 mm pitch but that drop test reliability would go down because the UBM cross section would be smaller.


John Hunt of ASE indicated that ASE does not have 300 mm eWLB in production but commented that “..demand just does not warrant putting that capacity in place” . It was news to me, and I’m sure it will be to most of you, that Infineon is the only commercial customer for eWLB today. Reportedly ST Micro is close but today it is only Infineon .

Much has been made of the possibility for eWLB to move to panel production. Having tried to do thin film packaging on 450 mm panels at Micromodule Systems in the mid 90’s (see fig below) I know that this is easier said than done. (FYI that’s AVX’s Bob Heistand 3rd from the left on top row, Intels Mike Skinner to the right of me and Larry Moresco in front of him. MMS program Mgr Chung Ho was absent from the
picture.

While all of the eWLB licensees are proposing fan out packaging on panels Hunt commented that “…we (ASE) are actually the only ones who have tried to do this….If we move forward with this approach it will require a totally new materials set” Hunt also indicated that they are attempting this work on ¼ panels not full PWB panels and obviously they cannot use MUF (molded underfill) to encapsulate the large substrates.

Next week we will look at a summary of 3D activity at the IMAPS DPC

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