Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1419905
OCTOBER 2021 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 37 Johnson: How does you go about developing a technology like this? Hogan: e company is growing quickly but is still relatively small. Collaboration and vision are required, we have major micro- electronics partnerships and projects with companies and universities in Europe and the U.S. that have altered our thinking as to what our technology could be. Our work with the CHiPS consortium at the UCLA Nano- technology Center is an example, where we use DART technology to alter the substrate positions of 1-micron pads to correct for error in the positions of semiconductor die before being attached. Some of the elements of the DART concept come from our work at UCLA, because of what we do in micro- electronics. Functionally, UCLA is working to eliminate the package of the semiconduc- tor altogether and mount the die directly to a silicon substrate. e key thing we found is that the mounting points on the die vary by a few microns. e question was: How can we manipulate the feature locations and the fea- tures so that each die (because we're talking about a micron variation) now matches to the substrate? e original thought process came three years ago when we faced this prob- lem mounting embedded components for a micro-level customer in Europe. Johnson: Obviously, it brings some greater sophistication to how your patterns get raster- ized, and that's always an issue, but what does the light engine bring to this? Hogan: e first step is that the light engine had to become DART compliant; everything in our system, the servers and all the hardware, must work in tandem to accomplish this complex task. But next-gen light engine takes advantage of the very high density DLPs, which are now imaging four million pix- els at every flash. While it's a major through- put enhancement, the data channel has also been significantly enhanced to allow for real- time data transfer such that DART can now be responsive in real-time. Johnson: at's easier maintenance, more throughput and a more robust system, lower cost to operate, more automation, and con- nection to the rest of my fab floor to automate more and have a wider process window. ose are a lot of benefits associated with swapping out and updating my equipment. Hogan: Certainly, the next-gen light engine offers roughly twice the throughput for a mod- est increase in cost; this means a huge impact on cost per panel imaged. Fewer light engines required means less complexity and higher reliability. But many of our existing custom- ers don't need to swap out their equipment to become DART compliant. We've built an upgraded system now that extends the capa- bilities of the existing equipment to include DART. ere are certain elements and some benefits of DART that the existing customer base won't be able to take advantage of, but at the end of the day they will have the capa- bility, and that was all covered in our Miva- Con virtual conference, which we opted to do when IPC APEX EXPO was canceled. New DART process control tools to make develop/etch/plating more consistent and feature control tools to improve feature uni- formity are readily available to the currently installed machine base. The next-gen light engine offers roughly twice the throughput for a modest increase in cost; this means a huge impact on cost per panel imaged.