Design advisor for package-on-package (PoP) manufacturing

The needs to integrate devices into portable products with smaller form factor and more functionality have fueled enormous growth of 3D packaging technology. The package-on-package (PoP) is one of the 3D packaging solutions, by which the packaging and assembly houses can achieve a lower cost, faster turn benefits and testing prior to assembly. PoP is a complicated system with multi-layered structure, which induces more manufacturability issues, such as stand-off height issue and top & bottom packages having different types of warpage. In order to reduce R&D cost, achieve fast time-to-market and address most of the manufacturability issues during the development of a new PoP, a design advisor for PoP manufacturing has been developed based on the design for manufacturability (DFM) methodology. The key components of this design advisor are the validated numerical models, comprehensive materials library, design guidelines of PoP packaging and novel finite element analysis (FEA) techniques. With the developed novel FEA techniques for curing process simulation and seamless packaging process simulation, complete numerical models for PoP manufacturing were developed and validated, which can simulate the whole PoP manufacturing processes. The design advisor is easy to use by selecting package geometries, material properties and process parameters. By running the envelope-based design advisor for normal package design or the FEA-based design advisor for special package design, the detailed analysis reports can be generated, including simulation results, design evaluations and recommendations to ensure the first-time success of package design. Therefore, the design advisor can help improve the yield of complex PoP manufacturing processes leading to higher quality and confidence of manufacturing processes, faster time-to-market and lower overall manufacturing cost.