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Product Briefing Outline: Surfect Technologies has launched 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.

Problem: 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; and lack of tools that are low cost, small in footprint and easy to scale into volume production.

Solution: 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.

Applications: 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) and Solar & LED metallization.

Platform: 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. 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, according to the company.

Availability: October 2007 onwards.