ULCOAT Chosen As Potential Mold Supplier For SUSS C4NP

Munich, Germany - SUSS MicroTec announced that the first potential commercial source for C4NP glass molds has been selected. During Semicon Taiwan, SUSS explained that the Glass MEMS Division of ULVAC COATING CORPORATION (ULCOAT) of Saitama, Japan has successfully demonstrated trial production of the reusable glass molds needed to bump wafers using IBM's C4NP process. "The availability of a commercial source for high quality glass molds is one of the critical aspects of this new bumping technology", states Dr. Emmett Hughlett, VP and Business Manager for C4NP at SUSS MicroTec. "We are extremely pleased to have ULCOAT on board and they have exceeded our expectations from day one".

C4NP stands for Controlled Collapse Chip Connection - New Process and is the next generation of wafer bumping technology developed by IBM. Pioneered by IBM, C4NP is a breakthrough in wafer solder bump technology, a semiconductor packaging technique that places pre-patterned solder balls onto the surface of a chip. These bumps ultimately carry data from individual chips to the rest of a computing system. C4NP is a simple and cost-effective alternative to the expensive and difficult electroplating process. Bulk solder is injection molded into re-useable glass molds which carry etched cavities according to the desired bump pattern on the wafer. The mold cavities are filled with pure molten solder which is subsequently transferred onto an entire wafer in one single step. This eliminates the need for electroplating of solder, enabling the use of any alloy including high performance lead-free solders – a critical need to fully enforce RoHS and to eliminate the use of lead in electronic products completely.

SOURCE: SUSS MicroTec