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36 SMT007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2025 Article by David Kruidhof and Kevin Jan COMET YXLON Editor's Note: e following is an excerpt om a paper at the 2024 SMTA Wafer-Level Pack- aging Symposium. For access to the full paper, please refer to the SMTA Knowledge Base at www.smta.org. Driven by smartphones, high-performance computers, and artificial intelligence, the global demand for high-end computing power is constantly rising. e industry is also facing demands for miniaturization, which creates the need for ever-smaller defect rec- ognition. e semiconductor industry has been identifying and solving these challenges for decades using various optical inspection and SEM tools. However, with the develop- ment of 2.5 and 3D packaging, using these optical tools has become less effective and/ or time-consuming and expensive. e need to see internal defects has also made these tools destructive. Detecting and understanding killer defects quickly can decrease time to market, increase yield, and improve process controls, all of which are vital for foundries and OSATs to develop competitive technologies in a fast- changing environment. To continue to find these killer defects requires the change from these typical inspection methods to non- destructive techniques. The Future of Advanced Packaging Inspection Is X-ray