March 1998
eMail the Editor
A Renaissance for Encapsulation
Welcome to the latest issue of Chip Scale Review. As you'll immediately notice, it's our largest issue yet„100 pages„and we hope our most thought provoking and useful. We've gone to the experts again to bring you the latest trends in encapsulation equipment, materials and processes. Encapsulation, after all, is virtually as important as the package itself in protecting the chip from the ravages of the environment.Chip-scale and chip-size packages are bringing about a renaissance in encapsulants and the equipment used to dispense them. What's good enough for DIPs, QFPs or TSOPs is simply not on the cutting edge for chip-scale packages. Conventional machines, which may do a yeoman job of molding traditional IC packages, are left at the starting gate when CSPs and near-CSPs are to be encapsulated. Many materials with decades-long histories are proven performers, but are lagging in the many new attributes needed for CSPs. As you'll learn from several articles in this issue, silicones are winning "star" status where CSPs are concerned.
We've got too many "must read" articles this month to detail them here, but our table of contents gives the full story. We'll just ask you not to miss our interview with Dr. "Mak" Shinohara of Ciba-Geigy, as he roadmaps the future of encapsulation. Mak is known in both the U.S. and Japan as a researcher with an encyclopedic knowledge of materials science.
We're also pleased to bring you an extensive tutorial on encapsulation by Prof. C.P. Wong of the Packaging Research Center at Georgia Tech. Dr. Wong has authored many books and papers on materials and has a special interest in encapsulants. We were lucky to get him to sit down between conferences to share his knowledge with us.
Our goal with each issue is to bring you more...more timely news of chip scale packaging from both here and abroad, more thoughtful, expert features and more articles written especially for-and by-the readers of Chip Scale Review.
Cordially,
Ron Iscoff
Editor