PRODI partner Fraunhofer IZM

Fraunhofer IZM's contribution to PRODI

Reel-to-reel technology platform - coating, patterning, testing

 

Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration
 izm
Department Polytronic Systems
Hansastrasse 27d, 80686 Muenchen -Germany
www.polytronic-systems.de and www.izm.fraunhofer.de

 

Company profile

The department Polytronic Systems of Fraunhofer IZM, Munich branch, has established the Reel-to-Reel Application Center in 2000, presenting a unique opportunity for both development and manufacturing of flexible systems in a production environment, allowing cost-efficient electronics and microsystems development on conventional and on large area substrates.

The Reel-to-Reel Application Center provides industrial equipment for coating and patterning of thin and flexible films, such as screen printer, sputter system, mask aligner, web coater, plasma treatment, etcher, stripper and electroplating. Also on-hand are characterisation and lamination units.
Every equipment operates in reel-to-reel mode, some also capable of single substrate handling. The equipment parameter are featured as flexible as possible to cover a multitude of applications. This is for the development of new technologies for flexible systems as well as to demonstrate producibility.

Fine line patterning - High density wiring can be realised for a more compact assembly. Minimum resolution of lines and spaces is at present about 15µm, at a Cu thick-ness of a few hundred nm up to 10 µm. Higher resolutions are worked at.

Polymer Electronics - Besides conventional packaging, development of semiconducting polymers enables the integration of active electronic functions directly by layering techniques. At present, activities focus on the transition from flexible transistors to integrated circuits completely produced by reel-to-reel processes. The feasibility of integrating polymer electronics in reel-to-reel processing was demonstrated by ring oscillators with a combination of standard and newly developed processes. In addition to polymer-based electronics, other components have been produced, e.g. simple displays and film-based heating components. Sensors and actuators are currently also a matter of research.

Assembly of ultra-thin chips - Cores of electronic systems are mainly active components. Mounted conventionally, rigid-flex circuit boards can only be applied on rigid circuit boards sound and reliable, whereas in future fully flexible systems are required. A precondition are flexible - to a certain degree - ICs, only achieved by chips of a thickness of 20µm and less, mounted either directly on the circuit board or in an ultra flat and flexible housing. Special bonding procedures have been developed for the processing of thin chips, designed for either high throughput or ultra-flat assembly The entire process chain for 'Smart Label' and electro-luminescent displays with a driver IC for an output voltage of 100V has been operated successfully, including wafer dicing and thinning, assembly and packaging of thin components.

 

Contact:

Gerhard Klink