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Going Vertical in Whitefish
September 9, 2007
No, I’m not talking about some new ski move that my son the Chef has come up with on the slopes in Boulder CO, rather I’m continuing with coverage of the Semitool Peaks in Packaging Meeting in Whitefish Montana.
Dan Hutcheson from VLSI research gave a general status report on the electronics industry. In their view the economy and electronics in specific are doing well and electronics will do even better in the 2nd half of 2008. He reports that chips will grow 5% in 2007 and they expect 11% in 2008. Equipment Should grow at 14% in 2008. The entire electronics market will end 2007 at 1,555B$ and will increase to 1,690B$ in 2008. They predict the next industry slowdown will come in 2010.
Yun Zhang from Enthone reported on their new results for Cu filling of through silicon vias (TSV) . Their goal is low overburden (copper plated on top of the wafer that then has to be CMP’ed off) , high throughput and fast fill rate. High Aspect ratio (AR) large diameter vias are the most challenging. By addition of the proper accelerators, suppressors and levelers they think they have come up with the proper formulation for 3D integration applications. The product, Microfab DVF 200, fills 50 x 200 micron vias in < 4 hrs with very little overburden. It reportedly will be commercially available in October 2007.
Possibly the biggest breakthrough report at the conference was from Alexey Rodin from XSil in Ireland. They have been trying to get their laser equipment accepted in the 3D arena for several years now. There are unsubstantiated rumors out there that they have been working with Samsung developing their 3D memory stacks. XSil is now showing vias down to 10 microns and claiming their roadmap will take them as low as 1-2 microns (since the only size limitation is the wavelength of the laser light).The laser sidewalls are nice and smooth and show a 85 degree sidewall angle (see figure below) which makes them nice for subsequent sputter seeding. They are also claiming throughputs of 2500 vias per second. This technology is certainly worth another look. I would guess their major impediment will be the foundries. If vias become available either FEOL or BEOL from the foundries, they will be resistant to use lasers which are foreign equipment in their fabs. They are much more comfortable with DIE equipment.
More details on the conference will be included in a future blog……………………
Posted by Philip Garrou on September 9, 2007 | Comments (0)
