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Design Approach to Eliminate the Influence of Alpha Particle Flux from Pb-Sn Solder in Flip-Chip Interconnects
Nita Schubert, Universidad Michoacana San Miguel de Hidalgo
Vivek Dutta, Advenient Technology
Lead-Tin solder alloys are most commonly used for IC wafer bumping in flip chip interconnects. Alpha particles, emanating from radioactive 210Pb in the solder, give rise to the phenomenon of 'soft errors in memory' in integrated circuits. Low alpha lead is used in order to minimize such effect. However, purification of lead using laser isotope separation technology is a costly process. To eliminate such cost and the impact of 'soft errors' on circuitry, an alternate approach to "reliable flip chip package design" has been proposed, where the self-attenuation distance of the alpha particles through various packaging materials is of key consideration. Methodology to calculate this distance 'd' is discussed. "Radioactive growth decay equations" were used to arrive at the initial 210Pb concentration and the "Monte Carlo code SRIM" was used to arrive at the various pertinent range values.
Dr. Nabanita Dasgupta-Schubert is a full Professor at the Institute of Chemical Biology, University of Michoacan, Morelia, Mexico and a Visiting Professor at the University of Texas Pan American. She is a nuclear chemist with more than 25 years of experience in the fields of nuclear chemistry, radiation detection technology and environmental radioactivity. She received her Ph.D from the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (Univ. of Bombay), India and continued her post-doctoral research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (University of California Berkeley), San Jose State University and the Max Planck Institute, Germany for Cosmochemistry. In industry she has worked as a Senior R&D Scientist at Agere Systems Optoelectronics and Princeton Gamma-Tech. She has published numerous papers in scientific journals and has presented her work at several national and international conferences. Her research interests center on applications of nuclear analytical techniques in materials science, semiconductor technology and in bioscience.
Dr. Vivek Dutta has more than 32 years of experience in the USA, Japan, India and Brazil, working in Microelectronics, Display and Metallurgical Industries. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. His experience and contribution has been recognized in both technology and business development sectors.
Dr. Dutta began his semiconductor career in Silicon Valley, working in Packaging & Interconnect areas at Fairchild Semiconductor. Since then he worked under various capacities at. National Semiconductor, Maxim, Cirrus Logic and Johnson Matthey Electronics. Until 2001 he was the President & CEO of Advanpack Solutions, Pte Ltd in Singapore, positioning the company to take leadership role in flip chip bumping, assembly and WLP arena. He is currently working in advisory and consulting capacity to various established multi-national as well as start-up companies in the US, Japan and South-East Asia.