Title
IC packaging technology retrospective—part 1
Joe Fjelstad
IC packaging technology
retrospective—part 1
All IC packaging technology structures caused scientists and engineers of the era nections were deployed and refined to
since the invention of the integrated circuit to explore. A variety of different methods make the process less intimidating and
itself have been tasked to perform, at a were examined, yielding interconnection more predictable, the packaging and
minimum, the simple and fundamental solutions that are still in use conceptually interconnection solutions that have been
tasks of interconnecting and protecting the today, though those early techniques have offered for making interconnection at the
semiconductor die and making it useful for been significantly improved upon over next level (i.e., the printed circuit board)
interconnection at the next level. Packag- the ensuing decades. For evidence of the have caromed back and forth across the
ing the IC was an important hurdle to efforts of that time, one need only look field over time. They have, for example,
clear, and IC packaging spawned a great back at patent records, which reveal that traversed from making surface mount
deal of innovation to tackle the problem of the techniques now so common, includ- connections, then to through-hole connec-
making interconnection of these minia- ing wire bonding and flip chip, were being tion, and back to surface mount again. IC
ture devices practical for those wishing to practiced shortly after integrated circuits packages and lead I/O formats have gone
design with them to make useful electronic made their debut. Figure 1 shows early from circular, as represented by the TO can
products by the integration and intercon- patent drawings for making basic electrical devices used early on and still in use today,
nection of the different IC devices. Making interconnections to semiconductor devices to square or rectangular packages with
the interconnections between chip and using methods that are all, for all practical two- and four-sided peripheral leads to area
package or substrate and doing so reliably purposes, still in use today. array package devices, these all collectively
was that an important early task that While the chip-to-package intercon- having lead sizes, shapes and pitches that
Figure 1. Representative patent drawings from early IC interconnection innovations. Clockwise from upper left a flip chip patent (US 3,292,240) by Robert McNutt, Edward
Davis and Arthur Mones of IBM, a beam leaded chip patent (US 3,184,831) by Karl Siebertz of Seimens, another beam leaded device patent (US 3,426,252) by Martin
Lepselter of Bell Labs and wire bond interconnection patents (US 3,006,067 and US 3,075,282) the first by Orsen Anderson and Howard Christensen and the second by
Joseph McConville all of them from Bell Labs.
4 – Global SMT & Packaging – February 2009
www.globalsmt.net
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