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(October 11, 2007) RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC — Nextreme, manufacturer of micro-scale thermal and power management products, announced the integration of cooling and power generation into the copper pillar bumping process used in high-volume electronic packaging. This breakthrough in flip chip process technology reportedly addresses two serious issues in electronics today — thermal and power management constraints.
Over 40% of the flip chip devices in the market today have significant thermal challenges," said Jeff Doubrava, Managing Partner of Prismark Partners, LLC, noting that this new technology is focused on the intersection of two of the most significant shifts in the semiconductor packaging market over the past twenty years: flip chip market growth and heat dissipation issues.
Copper pillar bumps have been used for the electrical and mechanical connection between the electronic device and the outside world. Nextreme has created a thermally active copper pillar bump with two functionalities that have not been implemented in existing electronic packaging. When electrical current is passed through the thermal bump, one side cools rapidly relative to the other. Alternatively, when heat passes through the thermal bump, the bump actually generates power.
"While the innovation itself is unique, it is the fact that Nextreme has developed the technology to fit into an existing, high volume manufacturing infrastructure – namely copper pillar bumping – that makes the breakthrough truly relevant," said Nextreme CEO Jesko von Windheim.
Potential flip chip applications for this thermal bump include microprocessors, display drivers, chip sets, RF devices, medical devices, watches, smartcards and analog/mixed signal devices.
Manufacturing of discrete thermal management devices from Nextreme will be supported with production at the Company's US facility in North Carolina; die level integration will largely be outsourced off shore; and wafer level processing will be licensed to merchant and captive providers of wafer-level flip chip processes.
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