Microelectronic Packaging Trends and the Role of Nanotechnology

Abstract

The microelectronic packaging industry is undergoing major changes to keep pace with the ever-increasing demands imposed by high performing chips and by end-use system applications. Solutions using advanced materials for microprocessor interconnect scaling and chip package interconnects, novel concepts in heat management systems, and improvements in package substrates continue to drive major packaging efforts. Advances in electrochemical technologies have played an important role in the evolution of such solutions for miniaturization of microelectronic devices and packages. Indeed, since the development of through-mask plating for thin film heads in the1960s and 1970s, an enormous amount of industrial and academic R&D effort has positioned electrochemical processing among the most sophisticated processing technologies employed in the microelectronics industry today [1--4]. Electrochemical processing is perhaps better understood than some of the dry processing technologies used in the microelectronics industry. Compared to other competing dry processing technologies, it has emerged as a more environmentally-friendly and cost-effective fabrication method. Electrochemical processing has, thus, become an integral part of advanced wafer processing fabs and an enabling technology for nanofabrication [5]. As the electronics industry faces the challenges of extending Moore's law, electrochemical processing is expected to continue to enable further miniaturization of high-performance chip interconnects, packages, and printed circuit boards. Evolving novel approaches to electrochemical processing using nano-materials and nano-fabrication techniques have started to make tremendous impact on further miniaturization of high performance devices and packages. A detailed discussion of different facets of technology advances in electronic packaging is difficult to present in the limited space of this chapter. The current chapter, therefore, makes an effort to capture some of the key developments in microelectronic packaging while highlighting the impact of electrochemical processing. Also included is a brief discussion of some of the foreseeable applications of nano-materials and nano-structures in advanced packaging.