By Q3D Notes On Mar. 20, 2012
There has been enough interest stirred up in R&D around glass as a low-cost alternative interposer substrate material compared with silicon, that there was an entire session dedicated to developments in that area at the 2012 IMAPS International Device Packaging conference, held March 5-8 in Scottsdale, AZ.  Rao Tummala, of Georgia Tech’s 3D Packaging Center, started things off, touting the Read More>>
By Francoise von Trapp On Feb. 07, 2012
Last week, CEA-Leti launched its Open 3D initiative to the 3D world in an effort to make its mature 3D technologies accessible to industrial and academic partners for their advanced products and research projects. Wanting to learn more about this offer than was detailed in the press release, I interviewed Leti’s David Henry, Open 3D project manager. He not only provided answers to my questions, he Read More>>
By Francoise von Trapp On Jan. 18, 2012
Earlier this week, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. announced it had “developed the world's first fully automated 12-inch (300 millimeters) wafer bonding machine, capable of producing 3-dimensionally integrated LSI (large-scale integration) circuits at room temperature.” This tool is targeted to the MEMS, 3D LSI's, and the RF market. I was skeptical of the words “world’s first” when I know Read More>>
By Francoise von Trapp On Dec. 21, 2011
At RTI’s 3D ASIP last week, I sat down with Paul Enquist, of Ziptronix, to get an update on the company’s progress with its direct bonding technologies.  Paul presented on Day 2 of the conference, but honored me with a one-on-one explanation on the application space enabled by the company’s two proprietary processes, Zibond and Direct Bond Interconnect (DBI).  Zibond is the direct oxide bond Read More>>
By Francoise von Trapp On Dec. 20, 2011
The supply chain business model for manufacturing 3D stacked ICS has caused perhaps one of the hottest debates so far in commercializing 3D semiconductor processes.  It’s easy to see why. Beyond the rather obvious question of who will own the liability of damaged devices, there’s a good deal of revenue at stake for those who make the investment in adding capacity for middle end of the line (MEOL) Read More>>