A Sample of ECTC Sessions:

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The 36 presentation sessions plus lots of poster papers kept everyone writing notes and asking questions. For the 80% of CPMT members that were not able to make the meeting the CD-ROM or paper proceedings are still available.
There was calm, confident mood at this year's conference at the San Diego Harbor Sheraton. Most engineers from industry looked worn out but saw orders picking up and so were positive about the future. Most of the professors saw their states running out of money and cutting back on financial support for universities…particularly salaries. Most of the students were very glad when their work was taken seriously and they cautiously engaged in scoping out employment opportunities.
Session 26: Advanced Packaging Technologies Chaired by Joseph W. Soucy (Draper Labs) and Sudipta Ray (IBM)
Muhannad Bakir of Georgia Tech spoke of the "Sea of Leads". This technology allows compliant contacts of up to 12,000/cm2. Under each solder bump is an air "bubble" that gives up to 30 microns of compliance.
William Dritzler of Lockheed Martin (San Diego) mentioned that the packaging of RF components is 72% o;f the cost of shipboard antenna. To this end he reported on a long term project using plastic backed chips on flex circuits.
Seong-A Kim of KAIST discussed wafer level MEMS vacuum packaging. He methodically compared the different methods of bonding wafers together: direct bonding--anodic and fusion, as well as indirect with eutectic AuSn, glass frit, and B-stage epoxy. They perfected solder with leak rates x100 of minimum mil spec. However, for very small MEMS package volumes even this leak rate many be too high.
Silke Spiesshoefer of University of Arkansas presented a new Z-axis connector for 3D packaging techniques that has advantages over solder balls, fuzz buttons, and wires embedded in elastomer. The approach involved multiple gold wire bond stubs plated with a spring retentive material with gold frosting. These stubs are amazingly uniform and form good pressure contacts over a range of deformation.
Erik Jung of University of Berlin discussed thinning wafers to 15 microns and embedding the chips within the board (chip in polymer)
D. Pinjala of the Institute of Microelectronics characterized a Thermal Interface Material designed to minimize the need for tight tolerances in assembly.
Session 36: Web-Based Packaging Education: Demonstrations chaired by Paul Wesling (Compaq) and Al Puttlitz (consultant).
The CPMT Society and other funding sources have been funding the development of web based courses that would help with continuing education of CPMT members. This session let web authors show their stuff. Picture shows Patrick McCluskey (U of Maryland), Paul Wesling (Compaq) and Jim Morris (Portland State U.).
James Morris of Portland State University discussed an Internet Course for conductive Adhesives used in Packaging. During the question period it was mentioned that a core library of java script for common packaging screen displays might be shared to help authors be more productive.
Patrick McCloskey of the University of Maryland discussed a Web-Based Graduate Course on Design-for-reliability of Electronic System. It seemed a systematic way of reviewing the most common failure modes and how to avoid them.
Rutgers University demonstrated their electronics packaging course. Since packaging is 47% of the cost of high performance ICs this is an important part of their curriculum. They had built in controls that allowed slowing down the presentation, repeating sections, and random access to different sections. (might be perfect for students getting tired of lectures).
A hands-on course was discussed by professors at Georgia Tech intended for the many engineers world-wide who are involved in complex board assembly and test. It takes $40K to design and fab a complex board. Thus it makes sense to have a virtual lab to make and test boards for education.
The most attended course came from Budapest University of Technology and Economics as presented by Zsolt Illyefalvi-Vitez. He reported 400 students a year take their very basic electronics knowledge computer based course (on a CD-ROM). It looked very interesting but the version completely translated to English will take a bit longer (any volunteers.)
Session 24: RF and RF MEMS chaired by Lih-Tyng Hwang (Motorola) and P. Agrawal (Propulsion Networks)
Alan M. Lyons of Lucent Technologies discussed a detailed study of matching a 40 Gb/s connector to transmission lines on a high speed board. The study was needed to insure testability of the final design, ease of assembly and repair, and supply a standard interface for many different component vendors. The design/simulation of the connector to circuit launch geometry in detail was needed.
Hector J. De Los Santos of Coventor discussed the boundary conditions that determine the best MEMS inductors that you can make.
Lih-Tyng Hwang of Motorola used tools such as Ansoft HFSS to find the best package for MEMS RF switch packaging from several "commercial" variations.