NANO3D SYSTEMS NEWS – Q1 2019

Val Dubin Uncategorized 14 Comments

NANO3D SYSTEMS LLC is in final phase of SBIR Phase II/IIB project founded by National Science Foundation. NANO3D’s eLOCOSTM plating technology has been endorsed by 22 customers including world largest companies in semiconductor, transportation and consumer electronics industries. NANO3D has also recently launched our new website (https://nano3dsystems.com) in collaboration with DirectHitsWebMarketing.com and Transene Company Inc. to market and sell products in the following categories:

  1. Electroless Plating Solutions (low resistivity Cu, ohmic contact NiP, conformal NiWP and CoWP barriers,  cyanide-free immersion Au, Immersion Zn and electroless Sn)
  2. Electroplating Solutions (high speed & bright Cu, low stress Ni, low stress & low CTE Invar, low stress Permalloy, low stress NiCo, cyanide-free Au, nano-crystalline Pd)
  3. Electrochemical microfabrication (plateable TiOx-Pd photoresist, Electroless NiP and Cu on Ceramics, Cu plated graphite particles, Ultra-Thin Ni & NiFe alloys Foils)

INDUSTRY TRENDS

Plating for Electronics Applications

The focus issues of JECS highlights Advances in Electrochemical Processes for Interconnect Fabrication in Integrated Circuits, Vol. 166, No. 1, 2019. Contribution from leading researches cover fundamental and applied aspects of electrochemical nano- and micro-fabrication including but not limited to:

  1. Superconformal cobalt plating for contacts and local interconnects in 10 nm and beyond technology that improves via resistance and electromigration. 
  2. Superconformal copper plating of through-silicon vias (TSV) and through-glass vias (TGV) interconnects for MEMS devices and glass interposers.
  3. Superconformal gold plating of recessed surface features for compound semiconductors and related optoelectronics to enable dense 3-D interconnects.
  4. Electroplating of copper for damascene interconnects, copper on ruthenium liner for electronics interconnects, gold & nickel for MEMS and FeCo & FeCoMn for magnetic recording.
  5. Electroless copper seed conformal plating for TSV interconnects and FeNiB alloy with low coefficient of thermal expansion for high-density packaging.

Superconformal cobalt and copper plating have been achieved in a single suppressor-type additive plating bath, while superconformal gold plating was demonstrated in an accelerating-type additive chemistry that is a significant departure from the conventional damascene process that uses three additives (accelerator, suppressor and leveler). The bottom-up fill mechanisms are based on pH & suppressor gradient for Co deposition, suppressor reduction for Cu TGV plating, S-shaped Negative Differential Resistance and Curvature Enhanced Accelerator Coverage models for superconformal plating of different metals. These mechanisms were discussed in papers from companies & research institutions including  Atotech, Corning, LAM Research, NIST, ITRI, Sandia National Labs and various universities such as Binghamton University SUNY, National Tsing Hua University et al.