wiredinUSA April 2013

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wiredInUSA - April 2013 89
OPM technology for high yield copper wire
bonding
FlipChip International (FCI) has launched
Elite™ OPM technology, providing a wider
process window for copper wire bonding
to support the move away from using
expensive gold wire. OPM technology
will be available from FlipChip Millennium
Shanghai facility (FCMS), a subsidiary of FCI,
and will provide landing pad protection of
the underlying semiconductor device for
a broad variety of semiconductor devices
and technology nodes.
Ted Tessier , CTOof FCI, said: "This...patented
solution originated in FCI's corporate R and
D center in Phoenix, Arizona and was further
deployed into volume manufacturing at
our Shanghai FCMS wafer bumping facility.
“Asaresultof theclosecollaborationwithour
subsidiary Millennium Microtech Shanghai
(MMS) and its wire bonded package
customers, Elite OPM is being introduced
to address ongoing cost reduction needs
and critical reliability concerns, such
as pad cratering and pad peeling. The
rugged structural characteristics of Elite
OPM enhanced pads ensure crater-free
copper wire bonding with high yields in
mass production.
"We are also currently evaluating IC
devices designed with circuit-under-pads,
which is a common miniaturization design
structure. Based on our initial results, the
OPM protected pads have provided robust
protection of the circuits underneath, and
the electronic performance of the device.
We believe that IC designers will be able to
utilize the benefits of Elite OPM to enable
the design of smaller devices without
package-related concerns."
Few-mode fibers series
OFS, designer, manufacturer and supplier of
fiber optic network products, has launched
a series of few-mode fibers designed for
space division multiplexing.
"Few-mode fibers can be used for space
division multiplexing where information
is transmitted simultaneously on several
modes, thereby further increasing the
transmission capacity of an optical fiber,"
says Robert Lingle Jr, director of fiber design
and systems research at OFS. "Spatial
multiplexing on few-mode fibers is one of
the very hot research topics at this year's
Optical Fiber Communication Conference,"
he added.
Three versions of the few-mode fibers
are available: a two-mode fiber with
graded-index core, which has a low
differential group delay; a step-index
two-modefiber;andastep-index four-mode
fiber.
"The OFS few-mode fibers have been
developed as a part of OFS participation