Packaging progress

Introduced last year by Infineon, eWLB technology uses a combination of traditional ‘front end’ and ‘back end’ semiconductor manufacturing techniques with parallel processing of all the chips on the wafer, leading to reduced manufacturing costs. According to the partners, increased levels of integration and a significantly higher number of external contacts means the technology can provide cost and size benefits in wireless and consumer product applications. ST’s decision to work with Infineon to jointly develop and use eWLB technology is said to be an important milestone for the approach and to boost its chances of becoming an industry standard. ST plans to use the technology in several products from its ST-NXP Wireless joint venture and in other application markets. “The technology is an excellent complement for our next generation products, especially in wireless applications,” stated Carlo Cognetti, director of advanced packaging technology for ST. “The technology sets new milestones in innovation, cost competitiveness and dimensions and we believe that, together with Infineon, we will pave the way to a new powerful package technology platform.”