Managing Wafer Size Migration: A Case Study of the Shellcase Wafer-Scale Package Technology

摘要

Recent years have seen the commercialization of wafer-scale packaging technologies, one of the leading applications being image sensors for solid state cameras. Wafer-scale packaging has the advantage over discrete packaging in that all the die on the wafer are processed in parallel. The costs of wafer-scale packaging are therefore shared among the number of yielded components, which makes the approach financially compelling when there are thousands of die per wafer. For the same reason, the diameter of semiconductor wafers continues to increase. This presents a challenge for wafer-scale packaging because of the need to re-qualify the processes for each new wafer diameter, when the cost and availability of the latest equipment are at issue. This article presents a case study example of how wafer size migration, from 150mm to 200mm then 300mm, was managed for the Shellcase wafer-scale packaging technology.