U.S. Funds flip-chip, diamond film/flat panel work

Electronic News, Sept 6, 1993

WASHINGTON -- The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), here, last week awarded a contract on flip-chip manufacturing and technology, while Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif., entered a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) on use of thin diamond film for advanced flat panel displays.

MCNC, a private, non-profit corporation supporting education and industry in Research Triangle Park, N.C. was awarded the three-year, $4.6 million contract from ARPA, while additional funding may be approved through a pending $3.9 million option.

MCNC's Electronic Technologies Division (ETD) will establish and qualify a manufacturing scale production facility for flip-chip processing, assembly and reliability testing in North Carolina.

The project is managed by the ETD Interconnection and Packaging Technology Group, directed by Dr. Iwona Turlik. "Our goal is to develop cost effective and reliable methods for flip-chip fabrication and make these techniques widely available to the semiconductor manufacturing industry," she said.

The facility is expected to serve both commercial and defense projects requiring solder-bumped integrated circuits, and collaborate with companies in promoting equipment, materials and standards for the technology.

Dr. Glenn Dunlap, vice president of MCNC, noted "We believe the processes established at MCNC will lead directly to significant improvements in electronic system performance, cost and reliability."

MCNC said flip-chip technology provides for dense arrays of I/Os on individual chips, and also the shortest possible connection from the chip surface to the rest of a system. The MCNC flip-chip process accurately places tiny solder bumps on each I/O connection pad of an IC. The solder bumps, each a few thousandths of an inch in diameter, provide electrical connections between the IC and the outside world when the IC is flipped over and connected to another flat surface, it was said.

"We are very pleased to win this contract. It represents three years of significant funding for a technology critical to the electronics industry," said Dr. Turlik.

Meanwhile, Lawrence Livermore, which is managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy, said it signed a three-year $1.9 million CRADA with two companies on the diamond film/flat panel R&D--SI Diamond Technology, Houston, Tex., and Commonwealth Scientific, Alexandra, Va.

The national laboratory said the work will be aimed at determining whether a system it has developed for depositing thin diamond films, particularly as small as 2,000 angrstoms thick, has applications in flat panel display manufacturing. Such flat screens are being explored for portable computer, home entertainment and modern aircraft cockpit systems.

About 20 years old, Commonwealth Scientific makes broad beam ion sources, plasma sources and gridless ion sources, which are among the key components needed in depositing thin diamond films.

The centerpiece of the program, however, is SI Diamond (formerly Schmidt Instruments) which was founded more than three years ago and went public earlier this year; it has about 40 employees and expects $2 million in sales for 1993. The company has developed laser-based techniques for laying down thin and ultra-thin diamond films on substrates and is positioned the technique for use in flat panel display production, having shown flat screen prototypes already. It is anticipated that the company will apply products to both federal and commercial markets.

"The support from the lab is very significant for us because, as a small company, we cannot hope to develop every component (of the display technology) on our own," said Michael Clark, SI Diamond's vice president of commercial development. "The lab has facilities and people we couldn't hope to duplicate."

Under a CRADA all partners contribute fund to a program. SI Diamond, however, has been the recipient of other federal funds related to its work, including a $600,000 grant from the Department of Defenses's Ballistic Missile Defense Initiative Organization and a $56,000 ARPA grant--both under the auspices of the federal Small Business Innovation Research Program--plus other federal monies.

The lab said it has been using a cathodic arc deposition method to make thin diamond films in which a large current arc is induced between a graphite cathode and an anode inside a vacuum chamber. The current vaporizes the graphite and creates a plasma of carbon ions which are then guided and directly magnetically to the substrate to be coated, where they condense to form an amorphous diamond surface. SI Diamond is said to have designed the mechanical and solid-state electronic components necessary which allow certain electric fields to stimulate thin diamond film production of the electron streams. The combination of the lab and Si Diamond work could contribute to cost effective flat panel display manufacturing.