Surfect Touts Lower Cost Development Electroplating Tools For Wafer Level Packaging Development

Tempe, Az - Surfect Technologies, Inc. a wholly-owned subsidiary of Surfect Holdings, Inc. , announced two new development electroplating tool versions that leverage its Ascent 200mm and Leapfrog 300mm scalable plating tool platforms. These new development tools are designed to enable more companies to enter and support the growing market for wafer level packaging by providing the basic metal deposition engines along with control and chemical delivery systems. Surfect's tool offerings are built around the industry's only one-chamber plating tool, which rapidly scales through well known copy-exact manufacturing methods to optimize both low-volume and high-volume plating solutions in the smallest space.

Surfect's tool is unique in that it combines traditional single-bath, multiple-tank plating approaches into a single-cell process with software recipe control of all metal deposition - all in a small footprint. The plating computer's sensors enable accurate real-time monitoring and control while providing a development architecture to add statistical and chemistry monitoring routines. The footprint of the single bump engine is 70% smaller than the nearest competitive solution. Capacity can be efficiently increased by vertically stacking bump engines into an intelligent frame complete with wafer handling.

To-date, the semiconductor industry has been challenged to develop high density packaging models that meet increasing demands for smallest form factor while keeping up with Moore's Law for device speeds and performance. The industry as a whole has had to contend with:

• High cost of development and capacity tools for bumping;
• Lack of process flexibility with current market tools;
• Lack of tools which are low cost, small in footprint and easy to scale into volume production.

"Surfect supplies tools and processes for the semiconductor wafer level packaging, solar, and LED lighting market," said Steve Anderson, Surfect's CEO. "Our tools are designed to emulate the successful assembly business model for Wire Bond, Die Attach and Wafer Dicing. We believe the market must be able to access lower cost wafer level packaging to meet the consumer product economics consistent with past industry growth, where interconnect costs follow sustainable learning curves."

According to Gartner-Dataquest, the market for equipment used to support die-level and wafer-level packaging was over US$4 billion in 2007. Driving this growth is the consumer market's requirement for increased system integration and continued miniaturization utilizing advanced packaging technology. The packaging component is increasing in relation to the total IC value as packaging is becoming an enabler for Moore's Law improvements. Strong advanced packaging growth is aided by the availability of low cost development tools, skilled operators, strong process tools and software, as well as the ability to handle multiple wafer formats.

Surfect is also developing and offering a library of process solutions enabling more complete wafer level interconnect solutions including the following:

• Bumps
• Pillars
• Redistribution Layers (RDL)
• Through-Silicon-Vias (TSV)
• MEMS & Package Seal Rings
• Thermal Heat Sinks
• Integrated Passive Devices (IPD)
• Solar & LED metallization

Chemistry recipes are managed through a software-driven control system that ensures repeatability from bump engine to bump engine and allows a smooth transfer from development to production. The company's packaging development background focuses on providing its customers access to the latest new technology using its tools. This development platform is intended to increase the number of companies that can develop new wafer level and solar solutions. Surfect's tools are unique in that they provide both the lowest cost of entry with a single cell solution for development as well as immediate process transfer to a high volume line consisting of multiple versions of this core bumping engine.

"The price for these development tools is less than US$500,000 for the 300mm tool and less than US$300,000 for the 200mm tool, well below today's million dollar entry point for larger competitive multiple-cell tools," said Mark Eichhorn, Corporate VP, Sales & Marketing. "Our tools are also capable of handling a range of smaller wafer sizes and thus are suited for rapid development and subsequent transfer into high volume manufacturing. What's important to recognize is this low cost, single engine development system is quickly scalable to a 10 engine automated system that will offer Tin/Lead rates of 20,000 per month."

SOURCE: Surfect Technologies, Inc.