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Topic Name: Researchers have Developed New Polymer could Improve Semiconductor Manufacturing, Chip Packaging and also Dramatic Cost Savings

Category: Chemical

Research persons: Dr. Toh-Ming Lu

Location: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, United States

Details

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Polyset Company have developed a new inexpensive, quick-drying polymer that could lead to dramatic cost savings and efficiency gains in semiconductor manufacturing and computer chip packaging.

Along with allowing enhanced performance and cost savings for conventional photolithography processes, the new material, called polyset epoxy siloxane (PES), should also enable a new generation of lower-cost, on-chip nanoimprinting lithography technology, according to the researchers.

“With this new material, chip manufacturers will be able to trim several steps from their production and packaging processes, and in turn realize a cost savings,” said Dr. Toh-Ming Lu, the R.P. Baker Distinguished Professor of Physics at Rensselaer, who oversaw the study. “PES is cheaper and more reliable.”

Lu’s research was published this week in the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B.

The widely adopted technique of photolithography involves using a mix of light and chemicals to generate intricate micro- and nano-scale patterns on tiny areas of silicon. As part of the process, a thin polymer film – called a redistribution layer, and crucial to the effectiveness of device – is deposited onto the silicon wafer, in order to ease the signal propagation delay and to protect the chip from different environmental and mechanical factors.

The new PES material developed by Lu’s group and Polyset Company is one such thin polymer film, and it offers several advantages over the incumbent materials typically used in the semiconductor manufacturing industry. In addition, their new PES material can also be used as a thin polymer film for ultraviolet (UV) on-chip nanoimprinting lithography technology, which is still in the early phases of development. The consistency of using PES in conventional technology, and then continuing to use PES while academia and industry test and gradually migrate to the next generation of devices, should help ease the transition, Lu said.

“Having the ability to use one material – our new PES – for both photolithography and imprint will be very attractive to manufacturers,” Lu said. “At its core, our project is basic research, but it also has important industry implications. It’s very exciting.”

Manufacturers today typically use benzocyclobutene and polyimide as polymers for redistribution layers, because of their low water absorption, thermal stability, low curing temperature, low thermal expansion, low dielectric constant, and low leakage current. Lu said PES offers significant advantages to these materials, particularly in the areas of cure temperature and water uptake.

PES cures, or dries and hardens, at 165 degrees Celsius, about 35 percent cooler than the other two materials. The need for less heat should translate directly into lower overhead costs for manufacturers, Lu said. Another advantage of PES is its low water uptake rate of less than 0.2 percent, less than the other materials. Additionally, PES adheres well to copper and can easily be made less brittle if needed. All of these attributes make PES a promising candidate for redistribution layer application and UV imprint lithography.

“The results demonstrate that PES is feasible to be used as UV-curable resist for both the redistribution application for electronic packaging and micro/nano imprint lithography,” said Rensselaer Research Associate Pei-I Wang, co-author of the paper.

Along with photolithography and on-chip nanoimprinting lithography, PES holds the potential for applications in other optical devices, flat-panel display, biotechnology devices, and microelectromechanical systems, Wang said.

Note for Photolithography
Photolithography (also optical lithography) is a process used in microfabrication to selectively remove parts of a thin film (or the bulk of a substrate). It uses light to transfer a geometric pattern from a photomask to a light-sensitive chemical (photoresist, or simply "resist") on the substrate. A series of chemical treatments then engraves the exposure pattern into the material underneath the photoresist. In a complex integrated circuit (for example, modern CMOS), a wafer will go through the photolithographic cycle up to 50 times.
Photolithography resembles the conventional lithography used in printing, and shares some fundamental principles with photography. It is used because it affords exact control over the shape and size of the objects it creates, and because it can create patterns over an entire surface simultaneously. Its main disadvantages are that it requires a flat substrate to start with, it is not very effective at creating shapes that are not flat, and it can require extremely clean operating conditions.
A single iteration of photolithography combines several steps in sequence. Modern cleanrooms use automated, robotic wafertrack systems to coordinate the process. The procedure described here omits some advanced treatments, such as thinning agents or edge-bead removal.

Note for Nanoimprint Lithography
Nanoimprint lithography is a novel method of fabricating nanometer scale patterns. It is a simple process with low cost, high throughput and high resolution. It creates patterns by mechanical deformation of imprint resist and subsequent processes. The imprint resist is typically a monomer or polymer formulation that is cured by heat or UV light during the imprinting. Adhesion between the resist and the template is controlled to allow proper release.
There are many different types of Nanoimprint Lithography, but two of them are most important: Thermoplastic Nanoimprint lithography and Photo Nanoimprint Lithography.
Nanoimprint lithography has been used to fabricate device for electrical, optical, photonic and biological applications. For electronics devices, NIL has been used to fabricate MOSFET, O-TFT, single electron memory. For optics and photonics, intensive study has been conducted in fabrication of subwavelength resonant grating filter, polarizers, waveplate, anti-reflective structures, integrated photonics circuit and plasmontic devices by NIL. sub-10 nm nanofluidic channels had been fabricated using NIL and used in DNA strenching experiment. Currently, NIL is used to shrink the size of biomolecular sorting device an order of magnitude smaller and more efficient.

Note for Benzocyclobutene
Benzocyclobutene (BCB) is a benzene ring fused to a cyclobutane ring. It has chemical formula C8H8 and CAS number [694-87-1].
BCB is frequently used to create photosensitive polymers. BCB-based polymer dielectrics may be spun on or applied to various substrates for use in Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and microelectronics processing. Applications include wafer bonding, optical interconnects, low-K dielectrics, or even intracortical neural implants.

Note for Polyimide
Polyimide (sometimes abbreviated PI) is a polymer of imide monomers. The structure of imide is as shown. Thermosetting polyimides are commercially available as uncured resins, stock shapes, thin sheets, laminates and machines parts. Thermoplastic polyimides are very often called pseudothermoplastic. There are two general types of polyimides. One type, so-called linear polyimides, are made by combining imides into long chains. Aromatic heterocyclic polyimides are the other usual kind, where R′ and R″ are two carbon atoms of an aromatic ring. Examples of polyimide films include Apical, Kapton and Kaptrex. Polyimide parts and shapes include Meldin, Vespel and Plavis. Polyimides have been in mass production since 1955.
Thermosetting polyimides are known for temperature stability, good chemical resistance, and for their excellent mechanical properties. Polyimides compounded with graphite or glass fiber reinforements have flexural strengths of up to 50,000 p.s.i. and flexural moduli of 3 million p.s.i. Thermoset polyimides exhibit very low creep and high tensile strength. These properties are maintained during continuous use to temperatures of 450oF (232oC) and for short excursions, as high as 900oF (482oC). Molded polyimide parts and laminates have very good heat resistance. Normal operating temperatures for such parts and laminates range from cryogenic to those exceeding 500oF (260oC). Polyimides are also inherently resistant to flame combustion and do not usually need to be mixed with flame retardants. Most carry a UL rating of VTM-0. Polyimide laminates have a flexural strength half life at 480oF (249oC) of 400 hours
Polyimide is often used in the electronics industry for flexible cables and as an insulating film on magnet wire. For example, in a laptop computer, the cable that connects the main logic board to the display (which must flex every time the laptop is opened or closed) is often a polyimide base with copper conductors. The semiconductor industry uses polyimide as a high-temperature adhesive.

Note for Microelectromechanical Systems
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) is the technology of the very small, and merges at the nano-scale into nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) and Nanotechnology. MEMS are also referred to as micromachines (in Japan), or Micro Systems Technology - MST (in Europe). MEMS are separate and distinct from the hypothetical vision of Molecular nanotechnology or Molecular Electronics. MEMS generally range in size from a micrometer (a millionth of a meter) to a millimeter (thousandth of a meter). At these size scales, the standard constructs of classical physics do not always hold true. Due to MEMS' large surface area to volume ratio, surface effects such as electrostatics and wetting dominate volume effects such as inertia or thermal mass. Finite element analysis is an important part of MEMS design. The sensor technology made significant progress due to MEMS. Complexity and performance of advanced MEMS based sensors are described by different MEMS sensor generations.
The potential of very small machines was appreciated long before the technology existed that could make them—see, for example, Feynman's famous 1959 lecture There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom. MEMS became practical once they could be fabricated using modified semiconductor fabrication technologies, normally used to make electronics. These include molding and plating, wet etching (KOH, TMAH) and dry etching (RIE and DRIE), electro discharge machining (EDM), and other technologies capable of manufacturing very small devices.
Companies with strong MEMS programs come in many sizes. The larger firms specialize in manufacturing high volume inexpensive components or packaged solutions for end markets such as automobiles, biomedical, and electronics. The successful small firms provide value in innovative solutions and absorb the expense of custom fabrication with high sales margins. In addition, both large and small companies work in R&D to explore MEMS technology.

In addition to Lu and Wang, co-authors on the paper include Rensselaer materials science and engineering professor Omkaram Nalamasu, who is also chief technical officer of Applied Materials Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif.; Rajat Ghoshal and Ram Ghoshal of Polyset Co. Inc. in Mechanicville, N.Y.; Charles Schaper of Transfer Devices Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif.; and Andrew Li of Applied Materials.

The project was funded through the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation.

Lu’s research was conducted as part of Rensselaer’s Center for Integrated Electronics. The center’s multidisciplinary team of more than 50 faculty researchers and 100 graduate students aims to advance the role of electronic devices of our everyday lives by accelerating the production of the next generation of micro- and nanoelectronic devices and systems. The Center's mission is to build integrated top-down and bottom-up nanostructures, devices, and systems for information, biological, and broadband communication applications. Major activities include pioneering research into gigascale interconnects, 3-D interconnect structures, materials properties and process modeling, wideband gap semiconductors and devices, terahertz devices and imaging systems, power electronic devices and systems, and biochips.

In figure 1, In this series of scanning electron microscope images of the new PES polymer in a UV-imprint lithography application, the well-defined pattern indicates the material’s potential for use in next-generation chip making techniques.
In figure 3, In this scanning electron microscope image of the new PES polymer in a photolithography application, the straight side walls indicate the material's good photodefinition characteristics.