SMT equipment builders' brief gets tighter

Rapid growth in advanced packaging and 'bumping' technologies drive surface mount technology equipment manufacturers to increase their presence on 'back-end' markets.

Lead-free wafer bumping and the need for smaller low-cost packages has triggered SMT equipment manufactures to deliver solutions that can facilitate the production of these tiny semiconductor-based electronic gadgets.

The production demands are slowly shifting from low volume to high volume, enabling the SMT equipment manufacturers to contribute systems for faster and better production of these devices.

Production of area-arrayed packages like flip chip BGAs and CSPs have helped SMT participants to realize their capabilities in serving these new market opportunities "Fast growing semiconductor packaging markets demand the use of traditional SMT equipment for bumping area arrayed packages, providing a high degree of adaptability to facilitate the need for high volume production of these electronic devices," said Frost and Sullivan research analyst Hemendhira Muralidharan.

Rising demands for smaller, thinner and low-cost packages are on the move.

Area arrayed devices that have demonstrated better device performances have begun to increasingly depend on SMT processes for their bumping requirements, enabling closer integration between semiconductor packaging and SMT assembly.

"An important factor that challenges the SMT market participants to cater the back-end semiconductor markets lies in convincing the semiconductor end-users to employ their equipments onto the semiconductor manufacturing chain," said Muralidharan.

SMT equipment broadly address the level two interconnect issues that deals with complete packages.

Back-end markets like die/flip chip bonding and die attach work at level one interconnect stages.

As a result, convincing the semiconductor equipment users to employ SMT equipment onto their semiconductor packaging process is difficult as not many processes are common to both.

Processes like screen-printing and inspection are gaining importance in back-end markets.

Newer interconnect and packaging technologies demand the usage of SMT equipment for their production.

To cater the back-end markets at large, SMT equipment manufacturers should come-up with solutions that can work on superior accuracy levels, smaller format sizes and ability to handle hot process.

SMT equipment integrated some of these semiconductor requirements expects to enhance the semiconductor manufacturing process contributing towards lower manufacturing and operational costs, gaining recognition.

SMT Opportunities in Back-end Semiconductor Markets, part of the Electronic and Surface Mount Technologu subscription, analyzes the placement, inspection and reflow soldering markets.

It also discusses the various market trends and opportunities while providing in-depth analysis of the market drivers and restraints.

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* SMT Opportunities in Back-end Semiconductor Markets: F718-28.

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