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PoP structures have been used widely in digital consumer electronics products such as digital still cameras and mobile phones. However, the final stack height from the top to the bottom package for these structures is higher than that of the current stacked die packages. To reduce the height of the package, a flip chip technology is used. Since the logic chips of mobile applications use a pad pitch of less than 80 μm or less, an ultra-fine-pitch flip chip interconnection technique is required. C4 flip chip technology is widely used in area array flip chip packages, but it is not suitable in the ultrafine-pitch flip chips because the C4 solder bumps melt and collapse on the wide opening Cu pads. Although the industry uses ultrafine-pitch interconnections between Au stud bumps on a chip and Sn/Ag pre-solder on a carrier, this flip chip technique has two major problems. One is that the need for bumps on both die and carrier drives up material costs. The other is that the long bonding process time required in the individual flip chip bonding process with associated heating and cooling steps demands large investments in equipment.To address these problems, we developed the mount and reflow with no-clean flux processes, and new interconnection techniques were developed with Cu pillars and Sn/Ag solder bumps on Al pads for wirebonding, were developed. It is very easy to control the gap between die and substrate by adjusting the Cu pillar height. Since it is unnecessary to control the collapse of the solder bumps, we call this the C2 process for direct Chip Connection (C2). The C2 bumps are connected to Cu substrate pads, which are a surface treated with OSP (Organic Solder Preservative), with reflow and no-clean processes. This technology creates the SMT/Flip Chip hybrid assembly for SoP (System on Package) use. We have produced 50 μm-pitch C2 interconnections and tested their reliability. The interconnection resistance increase caused by the reliability testing is quite small. It is clear that C2 flip chip technology provides robust solder connections at low cost. Also the C2 structure with a low-k device was evaluated and no failures were observed at 1,500 cycles in the thermal cycle test. This indicates that low-k C2 structures seem robust. For finer pitch flip chip interconnections, a wafer-level underfill process is needed to overcome the limitations of the standard capillary underfill process for ultra-narrow spaces. To date, a wafer-level underfill process exists for the C2 process with an 80-μm pitch. In addition to fine pitch interconnections, a die thickness of 70 μm is required to reduce the final stack height. Such thin die cannot be processed by the C2 process because such dies slip too easily during the reflow process. To resolve this issue, a Post-Encapsulation Grinding (PEG) method was developed. In this method the die is ground to less than 70 μm after joining and underfilling. This report presents the PEG method and reliability test results for die thicknesses 20 μm, 70 μm and 150 μm.

IMS (injection molded solder) is an advanced solder bumping technology with solder alloy flexibility even at very fine pitch and small size. One of key materials for successful fine pitch bumping by IMS is a photoresist material. The photoresist material must be stable at high temperature during the IMS process and be perfectly stripped after the IMS process without any residue on the surface of the substrate. In this study, negative tone liquid photoresist materials were prepared to investigate effects of thermal cure of photoresist on IMS process and stripping performance. With appropriate cure conditions, successful bumping without any film damages at IMS process and any residue at stripping was achieved. Fine pitch bumping down to 40 μm pitch with 20 μm diameter was demonstrated with a Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu solder. Also physical and electrical connections for the solder joints of IMS bumps to Ni/Au pads were confirmed using a 80 μm pitch test vehicle.

In this paper, we will describe a new low cost solder bumping technology for use on wafers. The wafer IMS (injection molded solder) process can form fine pitch solder bumps on wafers, while offering greater solder alloy flexibility. This method is also applicable to form uniform solder bump heights when a wafer has different size and shape of I/O pads. The wafer IMS bumping process uses a solder injection head that melts the desired bulk solder alloy composition and then dispenses the molten solder into resist material cavities on wafers within a nitrogen environment. The injected molten solder contacts and wets to the metal pads without flux, thus forming intermetallic compounds at the solder/pad interface. After stripping the resist material, solder bumps exhibit straight side walls and round tops as the solders have solidified inside the cavities of this resist film. This particular geometry is unique and offers a ready-for-substrate bonding condition without an additional reflow step. In the case of using Cu pillars, one resist material is used for both Cu electroplating and molten solder injection. After patterning the resist material, the Cu pillars are electroplated to the desired height, and the remaining cavities of resist material are filled by the injection of molten solder. The final bump height is defined by the thickness of the resist material. Therefore, any non-uniformity of Cu pillar height across a wafer is masked by the final solder bump uniformity. A prototype tool for wafer IMS bumping technology has been developed and solder bumping has successfully been demonstrated with Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu solder on 200mm wafers. The test wafer employed interconnects pads of four different diameters and three different shapes. Other solder compositions have also been tried successfully.

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