Low Cost Flip Chip Technologies for DCA, WLCSP, and PBGA Assemblies

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for R/D engineers and graduate students.
Review: I found this book an excellent one for engineers in research and development department, such as the packaging R/D team I am associated with. For an R/D engineer, this is a perfect reference book to get a brief idea about relevant technologies in every aspect of flip chip packages and the advantage/drawback of one technology over others. This is important as for most of the development teams wafer level packages and flip chip technologies are still under development or in the trial run stage. Further, as cost is always the primary concern for essentially all the packages, including, of course, flip chip packages, this book does offer a lot of kits and alternatives for R/D engineers to choose which material and process technology should be the most suitable for them to develop. This book also offers many types of new flip chip and wafer level packages, along with abundant up-to-date references in each chapters, that can stimulate a good engineer and trigger new ideas for either new improvement or inventing new packages for their specific applications.

On the other hand, it is also a very suitable reference book for a packaging class in the graduate school level. For students with material or chemistry/chemical engineering background, they can very much understand two-thirds of the contents. As to students with mechanical or electrical engineering background, with instructor's guidance, they can also grasp this part of knowledge with reasonable effort. For the rest one-third of contents that involves the use of the theory of fracture mechanics and finite element methods, most students should also be able to understand the spirit without much difficulty through the instructor's explanation.

Enboa Wu, Director for Electronic Packaging Technology Division, ERSO/ITRI, Taiwan; and Professor of Institute of Applied Mechanics, National Taiwan University.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Value to the Packaging Engineers and Researchers
Review: It is my pleasure to see our friend, John Lau, having another book (this is John's 12th book) published in the area of electronic packaging. The flip chip technology was developed more than 3 decades ago. However, due to the cost and reliability issues, flip chips were not yet widely adopted in the packaging industry. With the recent development of underfills and low-cost substartes, the aforementioned issues have been substantially improved. The present book appears just in time to promte the flip chip technologies to the packaging industry once again.

The 16 chapters in this book cover a wide spectrum of flip chip technologies. Following the introductions in Chapters 1 and 2, it is a pleasure to find a full chapter focused on lead-free solders. This is an emerging area in electronic packaging and should deserve special attention. Chapter 4 is another important subject in this book. Without high-density PCBs and substrates, the applications of flip chips would become very difficult. Chapter 5 introduces flip chips with conductive adhesives. This is mainly for chip-on-glass (COG) applications. The next three chapters provide abundant information regarding underfill encapsulation. In particular, the analyses and discussion for imperfect underfills are rather unique. After a brief chapter on the thermal management of flip chip on board, a comprehensive coverage on wafer-level packaging is provided. This is another highlight in this book. Several wafer-level chip scale packages (WLCSP) are introduced and the technlogy of wafer-level metallization and redistribution is discussed in depth. Chapters 11 and 12 concern two special topics: via-in-pad (VIP) and Direct Rambus (RIMM), respectively. The provided information is rather new. The next three chapters are focused on three forms of plastic ball grid array (PBGA) packages. Although two of them use wire bonding as the chip-level interconnect, they serve as good references for the comparison with solder-bumped flip chip PBGA packages. The last chapter of this book gives plenty of experimental results from failure analysis. This information is very helpful for understanding the failure mechanism of flip chip assemblies.

In summary, the present monograph is a very good reference book on low-cost flip chip technologies. The information is unique and up-to-date. I enjoy this book a lot and find it very helpful to my research work. It is a great value to the packaging engineers and researchers!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book both for students and packaging professional
Review: The book exceeded all my expectations as a comprehensive discourse on Flip Chip technologies. It is extremely difficult to write a book that caters equally well to students and professionals alike, but the author seems to have succeeded in the task. For professionals in the field of electronic packaging, the book is an invaluable and comprehensive resource whether to refer a quick topic, or to study a concept in detail. It is also very up-to-date, complete with current international papers. For students, the fluid style makes good reading and the important concepts are explained thoroughly. Finally, the informations are very useful, and sometimes even lead to contemporary research issues.

As someone who was in the industry, and currently working at the University of Oxford - I can say that the book works great for both. Altogether, an excellent and timely book for electronic packaging people!