Partnership between SUSS MicroTec and SET to develop a combined equipment solution for 3D chip integration

SUSS MicroTec SE and SET Corporation SA announce a partnership in sequential die-to-wafer (D2W) hybrid bonding, a die-based interconnect technology. As part of the partnership, SUSS MicroTec and SET will provide a fully automated, customizable, highest-yield equipment solution to customers. This solution will accelerate the industry’s path towards advanced 3D multi-die solutions such as stacked memory and chiplet integration.

GARCHING, GERMANY AND SAINT-JEOIRE, FRANCE – EQS Newswire – 1 September 2021 – SUSS
MicroTec, a leading supplier of equipment and process solutions for the
semiconductor industry announces a joint development agreement (JDA) with SET,
a leading supplier of high precision flip-chip bonders. The main focus of the
JDA is the development of a fully automated, customizable, highest-yield
sequential die-to-wafer hybrid bonding equipment solution by combining SUSS
MicroTec’s expertise with FEOL-compatible automated surface preparation of
wafers and singulated dies which are populated on a wafer or frame and SET’s
ultra-high accuracy die-placement technology, which will be further enhanced by
high-performance metrology that offers closed-loop feedback to the bonding
system.

At a time where traditional transistor-scaling is approaching its limit, 3D
packaging and heterogeneous integration have already been widely adopted in the
industry in order to further increase the performance and functionality of
today’s semiconductor devices. However, today’s 2.5D and 3D packaging schemes
are limited by the minimum interconnect density that traditional microbump
technology can offer. Hybrid bonding solves this problem by bonding the direct
contact between two metal pads (mostly copper) and surrounding dielectrics in
one single bonding step. This bumpless bonding approach allows for
substantially smaller pitches and higher interconnect density which are the key
enablers for future generations of multi-die solutions.

Interconnect density scaling is driven by a number of fast-growing
applications that include power computing, artificial intelligence (e.g.
autonomous driving), 5G mobile, as well as a variety of additional
More-than-Moore devices such as next-generation CMOS image sensors. To obtain
high yields for devices with high interconnect densities customers not only
require ultra-precise die-placement solutions, but also reliable surface
activation and a process guaranteeing particle-free surfaces.

As part of this partnership, SUSS MicroTec’s high-efficiency surface
preparation modules and throughput-optimized metrology solutions for post bond
overlay verification will be combined with SET’s latest ultra-high accuracy D2W
hybrid bonding platform. Closed-loop feedback between the metrology and the
die-bonder module will help to continuously monitor and optimize the overlay
performance, enabling consistent die-placement accuracy below 200 nm as well as
interconnect pitch scales in the sub-micron region. The modular, highly
flexible equipment concept allows for stand-alone surface preparation and
hybrid bonding as well as a fully integrated equipment solution depending on
the specific application and/or customer requirements. This concept also
enables an integrated cluster approach that can support all individual hybrid
bonding paths in a single platform: wafer-to-wafer (W2W), collective
die-to-wafer (CoD2W) and/or sequential die-to-wafer (D2W).

Goetz M. Bendele, PhD, CEO of SUSS MicroTec, puts this into perspective:
“Hybrid bonding is one of the main growth drivers of the advanced
semiconductor backend equipment space, as well as one of the main growth levers
for SUSS MicroTec. With our partnership with SET, we will be able to offer our
customers a complete suite of both die-to-wafer and wafer-to-wafer hybrid
bonding solutions for the broadest set of heterogeneous integration
applications in the advanced backend space. Our die-to-wafer bonding solution,
leveraging the combination of SET’s leading-precision die placement technology
with SUSS’s proven surface activation, automation, and metrology capabilities,
will deliver additional customer value through differentiation in terms of
throughput and yield, while at the same time enabling friction-less integration
into our customers’ fabrication sites.”

Pascal Metzger, PhD, CEO of SET: “Thanks to several partnerships we had
& our more than 10 years experience in hybrid bonding, we have succeeded in
taking hybrid bonding from a purely laboratory state to an industrial state.
Thus in September 2019, SET launched a stand-alone machine – the NEO HB. Thanks
to our new partnership with SUSS MicroTec, we are now going to accelerate the
integration and automation phase of the process. This will permit to provide a
complete industrial solution to our customers, for applications coming in the
very near future such as HPC, IA, 5G and many other more, to diversify our
offer and address new market segments.”

For more details on Hybrid Bonding at SUSS MicroTec please visit our
website: https://www.suss.com/hybrid-bonding

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Picture: https://eqs-cockpit.com/c/fncls.ssp?u=2e22977094a46bde1e85a5237025d59d