Plenty of interesting advanced packaging news in the Packaging Report this week -- including Unisem taking its copper wirebonding technology to volume shipment, IMEC's views on 3-D stacking, and a TechSearch study, as well as aquisitions, collaborations and new tool announcements. Be sure to check out the Editor's Picks, and also remember you can always find news and events on our Packaging Technology Channel:

Sally Cole Johnson, Contributing Editor
scolejohnson@mac.com

Unisem Takes Copper Wirebonding Process to Volume Production
Sally Cole Johnson, Contributing Editor -- Semiconductor International, 10/15/2008

The industry's interest in copper wirebonding is being driven largely by copper's enhanced performance characteristics. More

IMEC Views 3-D Stacking as System Design
Laura Peters, Editor-in-Chief -- Semiconductor International, 10/14/2008

IMEC managers said the research center has made significant progress creating test 3-D ICs, using die-to-die stacking. IMEC's Eric Beyne said achieving coplanar and particle-free surfaces still presents processing challenges. He described the dual-damascene via processing as comparable to traditional front-end interconnect via processing, but with larger features. More

TechSearch: Steady Growth Ahead for Flip-Chips, WLP
Sally Cole Johnson, Contributing Editor -- Semiconductor International, 10/14/2008

Flip-chips and wafer-level packaging (WLP) are emerging as industry "bright spots," with a continued growth rate of 14% forecasted for both flip-chips and WLP between 2007 and 2012, according to a study by TechSearch International Inc. More

Ultratech Acquires Annealing Patents From IBM
PR Newswire, 10/9/2008

Ultratech Inc. announced that it has acquired the rights to a collection of patents from IBM, including patents around the area of rapid thermal annealing. More

ESI Launches Micromachining Tool Aimed at TSVs
Business Wire, 10/9/2008

Electro Scientific Industries announced the availability of the latest version of the 5330 micromachining system, the Si5330. More

NEXX Licenses Alchimer's Coating Technology
Laura Peters, Editor-in-Chief -- Semiconductor International, 10/8/2008

Alchimer SA (Paris) said it has licensed its eG ViaCoat product for creating conformal copper seed layers for through-silicon via (TSV) applications to NEXX Systems Inc. (Billerica, Mass.), a maker of electroplating tools. The partnership allows the combination of 300 mm tooling with the optimized chemistry and recipes used in the eG ViaCoat for copper seed deposition. More

Mentor Graphics Acquires Flomerics
Business Wire, 10/9/2008

Mentor Graphics Corp. announced final completion of the acquisition of Flomerics Group PLC, a UK-based supplier of computational fluid dynamics analysis products. More

Panasonic and Renesas Collaborate on 32 nm Process
Business Wire, 10/8/2008

Panasonic Corp. and Renesas Technology Corp. are collaborating on the development of elemental process technologies for systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) for the 32 nm node. More