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White Paper: Material Sets Deliver Tested, Reliable Compatibility and Significant Cost Reductions

Posted by Michael Todd, Ph.D., the electronics group of Henkel on 24 May 2006 at 00:00

As the industry continues to move toward smaller devices with increasing time-to-market demands and the changing regulatory challenges of “green” and lead-free manufacturing, creating a reliable package cost-effectively is arguably one of the biggest obstacles to overcome in today’s semiconductor packaging market. In the abbreviated product development cycle that is characteristic of most new devices, packaging specialists must design, prototype, test and build new products while ensuring guaranteed material compatibility and long-term reliability—a monumental task to say the least.

As defined, a material set is a group of materials such as mold compounds, die attach materials, underfills and encapsulants that are all specifically designed to work together in a synergistic manner to provide maximum product reliability. Traditionally, material set compatibility testing has been conducted in-house with various materials tested one against the other for synergistic properties. This, though, can be very time and cost intensive as a new package design with three different materials puts incredible testing demands on the engineer. Materials have to be sourced from two or three different suppliers and all of those materials—which can amount to nine different sets of materials or more – have to be tested for various levels of reliability. When one considers the amount of time and cost involved in this process, it is obvious that a robust and cost-effective solution to material set development is long overdue.

Much like the product design and manufacturing outsourcing efficiencies that have been realized by OEMs in the electronics market, the same approach is now attracting attention and delivering a viable solution for the development of new devices and compatible material sets. Many electronic device manufacturers are engaging with materials developers and suppliers who can provide products designed to work together as a reliable and cost-effective material set and supported by a global applications group. Essentially, with this approach, the need for multiple product evaluations and vendor approvals is eliminated.

In practice, the viability of this approach is being validated everyday. One recent example of the benefits realized through compatible material set development was put forth by the electronics group of Henkel and is just one example of how a material supplier’s product expertise can deliver a material set solution for outstanding product reliability. Lab data has validated testing that confirms that stress on a mold compound (MC) can be predicted by varying the dimensions and design of the die attach (DA) material, proving that the stress on one material is significantly affected by changing the other material in a DA and MC material set. From this data, compatible and tested material sets have been developed for various applications. Henkel has developed numerous other material sets that are designed to deliver robust performance, compatibility and long term reliability.

However, let the buyer beware. While there are many suppliers who “supply” more than one material, the material set approach is only viable if that supplier can deliver real cost reduction through unmatched engineering expertise, synergistic material set testing, reliability testing, state-of-the-art facilities and total global support. A material set development program should include the following resource: full production capabilities to simulate actual electronic production, reliability testing facilities, complete application engineering capabilities, electrical test resources and failure analysis facilities.

In addition to these resources located in one, streamlined facility with a full staff of technical experts, material set design and development should comprise Finite Element Analysis (FEA) design to determine the materials influence on interfacial stresses and package warpage, material system development to optimize overall package stress through material property design and develop compatible material systems, package and application testing to determine performance capabilities and material compatibilities, and material set process optimization to optimize process parameters and process windows while providing new process technologies.

Having all of these factors in place will reduce product development cycles of robust, reliable products at significantly lower costs. Customers should expect their materials partners to offer extensive resources, high levels of expertise and the ability to provide compatible material sets for emerging package requirements. Henkel is breaking new ground in this area and currently is one of the only materials suppliers worldwide with these broad capabilities. As the industry transitions to more complex products, more challenging technologies and increasing regulatory demands, only those suppliers with the expertise to partner with customers from product design through to production and provide global support will be successful.

Keywords : Henkel, white paper, materials, material sets

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