Some novel interconnect technologies for consumer and specialised electronic products

The unabated demand in consumer electronics for smarter and more portable products has spurned the creation of manufacturing and packaging processes that allow greater component integration and reduced system footprint. Two technologies of topical importance in reducing the weight and volume of such electronic products are (1) the creation of ultra-fine pitch interconnects and (2) the metal filling of high aspect ratio vias to allow interconnections across silicon wafers and PCBs. This demand for new interconnect technologies is to be contrasted in the bio-medical sector with the requirements of material bio-compatibility as well as stringent deposition and assembly temperatures during the integration of these materials onto a chip, making packaging and assembly highly challenging fields.

This paper presents a review of the fabrication and assembly processes developed by the Microsystems Engineering Centre (MISEC) to address the aforementioned challenges in the area of consumer electronics and biomedical devices. High deposition rate and low temperature processes, namely metal electrodeposition and stencil printing, are used in the assembly of optoelectronic, electronic and biomedical devices. A summary of the state of the art in each application area is provided. The novel fabrication approaches developed are then described and preliminary results are presented. A summary of the key findings and future work conclude this article.