Materials in next generation of packaging

The Packaging Research Center (PRC) was established to explore, develop, and prototype the next generation of electronic packaging technologies and to produce a new breed of globally competitive engineers thereby providing both the technological and human resources necessary to enable 10/spl times/ improvements in size, cost, performance, and reliability of next generation electronic products. The research vision parallels what integrated circuits did for transistors - ever increasing integration while maintaining constant manufacturing costs. The strategy is a systems-level approach with a balanced combination of fundamental, applied, cross-disciplinary, and prototype research to overcome the technological barriers. The cross-disciplinary research efforts are integrated into four focused research areas: (1) Systems Integration, Design, and Test; (2) Low-cost, Integrated Substrate; (3) Optoelectronics and Wireless Electronics; and (4) Assembly, Reliability, and Thermal Management. Materials form the "heart and soul" of next generation of packaging and include enhanced materials for printed wiring board, interlayer dielectrics, integrated capacitors, resistors and inductors, flipchip solder joints and alternatives, underfills and encapsulants and heat-transfer materials.