Time for change in pre-assembly? The challenge of thin chips

Abstract

One of the most challenging tasks in pre-assembly, coming up in recent years, is to produce thin chips. Lots of applications are standing on the horizon: Smart-cards (credit-card, telefon, security), tags and labels (tube-tickets, price-labels), memory applications (stacks of thin memory-chips). Power- and high-frequency devices are also getting thinner. Several procedures have been suggested and are in some cases already in production for manufacturing thin chips. Most promising are cluster-tools, combining several single processes in one equipment. We will look at the different process-flows and equipment-tools which are available or announced nowadays. Main aspect in judging these methods are compatibility between Front-End and Back-End, process-stability, quality and cost-effectiveness. According to product needs there will be different processes which are to be considered as best practice.