Andy C. Mackie, Ph.D., MSc., Senior Product Manager, Indium Corporation

Andy C. Mackie, Ph.D., MSc., Senior Product Manager, Semiconductor and Advanced Assembly Materials, Indium Corporation

It is now obvious that the promise of 3D die stacking for portable applications is still a long way away, due to the simple economics of throughput: we can't stack and reliably bond them fast enough, yet. The first application for 3D memory (controller logic + memory cube) will, of course, be in server applications. Interestingly, at the 2013 MEPTEC roadmapping meeting, Cisco revealed that they see 3D as merely a stopgap measure on the way to optical integration.

For critical waferbumping applications, such as copper pillar/microbump applications used in 2.5D and 3D where high throughput, co-planarity, and low tolerance for bump surface contamination is critical, we have seen increasing interest in our unique "bump fusion" (waferbumping) fluxes.

Indium Corporation’s expanding portfolio of ultralow residue and near-zero residue no-clean fluxes is enjoying a series of design wins in both standard mass reflow and thermocompression bonding for 2.5D assembly. Ultralow residue solder pastes and fluxes are also being adopted in a variety of MEMS applications, from microphones to gyroscopes, as well as medical applications.

Additionally, Indium Corporation's WS446 water-soluble ball-attach flux leads the BGA industry for solderability on OSP substrates that have passed through multiple FC-BGA reflow, cleaning, and drying processes.

There is exciting news in the power semiconductor arena. Our high temperature lead-free (HTPbF) solder paste technology, BiAgX(TM), is now well proven and will ramp with major power semiconductor customers in 2014. This paves the way for completely lead-free discrete power semiconductor devices.

For more information about Indium Corporation, visit www.indium.com or email abrown@indium.com.