IEMT Symposium Big Hit with SEMICON West Attendees

The International Electronics Manufacturing Technology Symposium was held in conjunction with SEMICON West in July. A record crowd of 222 attendees enjoyed a variety of excellent presentations at the back-end assembly and test show in San Jose, California. The symposium focused on electronic components and systems manufacturing technology.

Joseph Adam, Vice President Technology Integration, Skyworks, Inc. and Co-Chair, ITRS Packaging Technical Working Group gave an exciting keynote presentation. It focused on the major technology challenges facing the industry in packaging substrates, design tools, new materials requirements, packaging of low K/Cu semiconductors, and high frequency design.

Sessions included topics from wire bond to flip chip and wafer level packaging. The best paper of the symposium award was presented to Scott Barrett of the K&S Flip Chip Division for "A New Wafer Level Package for Improved Electrical and Reliability Performance." A special session on "Green" manufacturing included discussions on lead-free solders from ChipPAC, Fairchild Semiconductor's implementation of lead-free bumping in a power package, IBM's lead-free CBGA, a lead-free flip chip assembly process from Philips, a perspective on lead-free solder reliability from the Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, and Infineon's package using a halogen-free molding compound. Hot topics at the symposium also included stacked packages and system-in-package with presentations from Bridge Semiconductor, AIT, Tessera, STATS, DT Microcircuits, and Flextronics. A variety of papers featured reliability studies and advanced material developments. Special sessions on test, factory simulation, automation, and integration rounded out the symposium.
--submitted by Jan Vardaman