| XSiL Impressed Audience at PEAKS in Packaging Conference |
| Dublin, Ireland, October 15, 2007 |
“Possibly the biggest breakthrough report at the conference was from Alexey Rodin from XSiL in Ireland. They have been trying to get their laser equipment accepted in the 3D arena for several years now. There are unsubstantiated rumors out there that they have been working with Samsung developing their 3D memory stacks. XSiL is now showing vias down to 10 microns and claiming their roadmap will take them as low as 1-2 microns (since the only size limitation is the wavelength of the laser light).The laser sidewalls are nice and smooth and show a 85 degree sidewall angle (see figure below) which makes them nice for subsequent sputter seeding. They are also claiming throughputs of 2500 vias per second. This technology is certainly worth another look. I would guess their major impediment will be the foundries. If vias become available either FEOL or BEOL from the foundries, they will be resistant to use lasers which are foreign equipment in their fabs. They are much more comfortable with DIE equipment.”
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