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During a ceremony at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) on Wednesday night, July 18, Advanced Packaging presented its 2007 awards saluting novel solutions, innovation, and technological advancements. In her opening remarks, Gail Flower, editor-in-chief, talked about motivation, quoting Winston Churchill, and how drive to succeed in the industry fuels innovation. Flower and Christopher Platt, group publisher, honored recipients with the much-coveted APA glass statuettes in recognition of their achievement. Following the ceremony, honorees celebrated with several hundreds of industry colleagues and guests at The Party 2007 — SF MOMA. Following are the 2007 Advanced Packaging Awards winners.
3D Packaging
STATS ChipPAC (Singapore) and Ultratech (San Jose, CA) won the category for a fan-in package-on-package (FiPoP) and through-silicon via (TSV) alignment method, respectively. STATS' FiPoP accommodates multiple die sizes in a reduced footprint, due to an exposed array of land pads on the top, center surface of the bottom package. Ultratech's AP300 DSA lithography system uses front-side infrared (IR) to perform dual-side alignment, achieving front-to-back overlay of less than 2 µm at 3 sigma over a 300-mm wafer.
Die-attach Equipment & Materials
ASM Assembly Automation Ltd. (Kwai Chung, Hong Kong) received the award for its AD8912 inline die-bonder. The platform consists of the CPS12 automatic tape cut-and-paste module, AD8912SD automatic die bonder, and APS70 automatic press station, and handles all stacked-die configurations
Dispensing/Encapsulation/Molding/Underfill Equipment & Materials
Ovation's (Bethlehem, PA) Active Stencil stencil/dispense converter system won this category. It transforms inline screen printers with 29" × 29" frame capabilities into accurate fluid-dispensing systems, adding dispense capabilities to an SMT line without additional standing equipment.
Environmentally Friendly Materials
Aqueous Technologies Corp. (Rancho Cucamonga, CA) was honored for its zero-discharge defluxing system, the SMT1000-ZD. With single-, two-, three-, and four-chambered options, the systems offer various throughput capabilities; enabling individual recipes to run simultaneously. A built-in chemical management system automatically mixes and doses wash chemical into the wash-solution recycling system.
Flip Chip Equipment & Materials
Freescale Semiconductor (Orlando, FL) took the award for a packaging system it developed. Redistributed chip packaging (RCP) claims up to 30% package area and package thickness shrinkage, along with 30% cost reduction due to the elimination of wirebonds, bumps, and PCB substrates.
Handling Equipment & Fixtures
DEK (San Jose, CA) was named the winner of this category for its Virtual Panel Carrier (VPC) substrate centering and carrier technology. The product provides the stability, centering, and alignment capabilities required to process multiple substrates or components in a single panel.
Package Design Software & Equipment
Mentor Graphics (Wilsonville, OR) won for its Embedded Passive Designer. This tool offers automated planning, design, and implementation to mitigate risks, reduce cycle time, and optimize material utilization and package cost.
Substrate/Submount Equipment & Materials
Indium Corporation (Clinton, NY) received the award for its NC500 series ball-attach fluxes. The low-viscosity, thixotropic, no-clean fluxes suit ball attachment to substrates in BGA manufacturing, joining the substrate and solder spheres in pin-grid and standard ball-grid array applications.
Surface Treatment Equipment & Materials
Asymtek (Carlsbad, CA) took the award for its SC-400 PreciseCoat conformal coating jet. Using a needle design with non-contact jetting and pulse-width modulated control, the product delivers conformal coating in small volumes at widths down to 1.2 mm, and thicknesses of 15 µm with solvent-based materials.
Test-and-Inspection Equipment & Services
Paricon Technologies Corp. (Fall River, MA) received the honors for its Burn-in Strip Socket. The universal burn-in socket interconnects any strip layout of a given size to the burn-in board independent of device contact arrangement. The technology is said to reduce inventories of burn-in boards, allow more components per oven slot, and reduce energy consumption.
Thermal Management Technology
Nextreme Thermal Solutions (Research Triangle Park, NC) took the award for its thin-film miniature thermoelectric module, eTEC, which is fabricated using semiconductor processing techniques. This enables scalability and embedding into applications for cooling, heating, and power generation.
Wafer-level Packaging Equipment & Materials
Laurier Inc. (Londonderry, NH) and NEXX Systems Inc. (Billerica, MA) tied for this category with their CS1250 wafer-level package (WLP)-to-tape-reel system and Stratus S300 electro-deposition plating system, respectively. Laurier's WLP-to-reel system uses dual pick-and-place arms to pick, flip, and place bumped devices into tape pockets at 16,000 cph. NEXX's configurable, fully automated electro-deposition system is designed for thick metal deposition in advanced packaging applications.
Wire Bonding Equipment
In another tie, Kulicke & Soffa Industries, Inc. (Fort Washington, PA) and Palomar Technologies, Inc. (Carlsbad, CA), won for the CuPRAplus copper capillary and Model 8000 wedge emulation products, respectively. Kulicke & Soffa developed the copper capillary to meet challenges associated with fine-copper-wire packaging; it incorporates a geometrical design and material surface properties that increase 1st and 2nd bond pull strength. Palomar's wedge emulation uses a ball bonder instead of a wedge bonder for low-profile interconnects, fine pitch, running-stitch interconnects, and die-to-die bonding in high-density packages. Chain bonding with stitch-stitch interconnects is said to maximize bonding speed at 7–12 wires per second.
Look for full coverage of the APA event and winners in Advanced Packaging's August/September issue.
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