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18 SMT007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2024 As PCB fabrication and assembly progress, what will the marketplace for photonic soldering look like in five years? We will see continued growth and adoption in those same areas. We'll be five years further down the road in that debonding application, so there will be more traction there. We'll be further ahead in connecting batteries directly on FR-4, with manufacturing roll-to-roll, IoT, and with wearable applications. We are watch- ing for new applications on the horizon that will continue to grow even as we gain penetra- tion in these cores. One of the applications we're watching is the advanced packaging space because it's a highly innovation-driven space right now. ere are large sums of money going to a collective of institutes either forming a new innovation eco- system, or building an improved manufacturing industrial infrastructure regionally. How many thousands of companies will be involved? It's huge and complex, both in the technical complexity piece, and also the robustness of that supply chain. We see the substantial investments going in and we think that there are a lot of opportunities for the kind of thermal processing that we offer. e die attach wafer bonding process is a known area of entry. Also, the photonic tools can cure polyamide in a few minutes vs. 20–60 minutes or longer of careful cook- ing time. Having this kind of thermal process- ing capability allows even more innovation in other aspects of advanced packaging, in addition to the shockingly simple temporary debonding plug-and-play that we talked about. So, we're really watching advanced packaging and get- ting involved. I still think there are opportunities in the hybridization of bio-inorganic technologies. It will happen at some point, probably more than five years down the road, though. Can you foresee a traditional EMS supplier making the choice to go 100% photonic? Is that a viable choice for them? Yes. One reason that the markets for certain kinds of products like wearables are being held up is precisely because of a lack of manufac- turing infrastructure to execute these prod- uct designs. Some producers are quite coura- geous and are getting funding to bridge that gap between concept and production piece. Some institutes like NextFlex in California already have an incredible collection of tools and expertise to boost crossing that gap. Pho- tonic processing is a part of that solution. We will continue to see demand on the mar- ket side grow. As that demand grows, the small percentage of applications that exclusively require the use of photonic processing, which today is maybe 5%–10%, will become a sub- stantial number of projects. ere will be an opportunity for companies to specialize. All these things come together with our dif- ferent kinds of placement models. We get it that it is a step for these companies to go into the use of photonic processes like soldering. We want to work with them, get a set of cir- cumstances together, let them get one of these tools into their manufacturing ecosystem, and try to have an impact. Stan, thank you for this conversation. It's been very enlightening. Nice to chat with you, Nolan. SMT007