Agile manufacturing of glass carriers for advanced packaging

By Serena Brischetto

SEMI met with Jay Zhang, business development director at Corning Incorporated, to discuss recent innovations at Corning that allow fine granularity CTE engineering as well as high Young’s modulus. We also talked about the impact of this work on in-process warp control, as well as the associated production methodology that provides rapid prototyping and high-volume manufacturing. We spoke ahead of his presentation at the 3D & Systems Summit, 28-30 January, 2019, in Dresden, Germany. To register for the event, please click here.

SEMI: What is Corning’s mission and vision and your role within the company?

Zhang: Corning is one of the world’s leading innovators in materials science with a track record of 165+ years of life-changing innovations. We excel in glass science, ceramics science, and optical physics and succeed through sustained investment in RD&E. Our products include Corning® Gorilla® glass, a durable material used on more than six billion mobile devices worldwide, and industry-leading LCD glass for display applications.

We have recently dedicated a unit of the company called Precision Glass Solutions to address the emerging need for glass in the semiconductor industry. Here we apply Corning’s long history of glass science expertise and deep customer relationships in consumer electronics to support cutting-edge applications like wafer-level optics for precise 3D sensing and carrier solutions for temporary bonding applications in semiconductor manufacturing. It’s our most recent work in the Carrier Solutions product line that I’m excited to present: a new carrier glass product optimized for fan-out, called Corning Advanced Packaging Carriers.

SEMI: What projects are you currently working on that you think will make a difference in 2019?

Zhang: My team is excited to introduce Corning Advanced Packaging Carriers this year. This is a new line of product within our portfolio of Carrier Solutions. These ultra-flat glass carriers are specially developed to reduce customers’ challenge of in-process warp by up to 40 percent, which in turn helps advanced packaging customers achieve better yield.

Corning Advanced Packaging Carriers feature high-stiffness properties and are available in a wide range of coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) in fine granularity. These attributes help customers select an ideal glass carrier that will minimize in-process warp for their package. Furthermore, we make sample quantities of these carriers available in just four to six weeks to help maximize efficiency during customers’ R&D process.

My team is excited about the potential of this new product, but also encouraged by our results. We have already supplied this product and have heard from one of the largest semiconductor companies in Taiwan that it has reduced in-process warp by as much as 150μm.

SEMI: Your presentation at the 3D & Systems Summit will focus on Agile Manufacturing of Glass Carriers for Advanced Packaging. What exactly will you be sharing?

Zhang: There is a lot of interest right now in using glass as a carrier substrate in temporary bonding applications in advanced semiconductor packaging – especially in fan-out processes. We also know that in-process warp is a significant challenge to companies pursuing advanced packaging because different CTE materials are added during the process.

My team has done a lot of work to understand the impact that an ideal CTE glass carrier substrate can have on minimizing in-process warp. We have studied the available levers – both theoretical and in real-life fab environments – that can help address this challenge. I will present our findings on how it is possible to select a glass carrier with the ideal CTE and Young’s modulus to reduce in-process warp by up to 40 percent, and how Corning has developed an agile manufacturing platform to support customers with these ideal carriers from their R&D stage through mass production.

SEMI: What do you think will be a hot topic in the next few years?

Zhang: We expect high-end fanout technology to address more applications beyond just mobile APs. There is also an interesting dynamic playing out between wafer-level and panel-level fan-out technologies. Corning is active in both areas. In developing and offering high performance glass carriers, we hope to help enable our customers to expand the fan-out applications space.

SEMI: What are your expectations regarding the summit in Dresden, and why do you recommend your members and other industry leaders to attend the 2019 3D & Systems Summit?

Zhang: Europe is where some of the most advanced packaging technologies are born. Fan-out also saw early commercialization there. I hope to meet many scientists and technologists at 3D & Systems Summit and exchange technical and business ideas. We also hope to get early feedback from other attendees about the value of our new product offering.

Serena Brischetto is a marketing and communications manager at SEMI Europe.

This originally appeared on the SEMI blog.