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EPTE Newsletter from Japan - INTERNEPCON 2008 (Part II)

This is part two of my observations from Internecine 2008 - Asia's largest exhibition for electronic packaging technologies.

The size of the exhibition grew compared to previous years.  Many companies presented many new technologies and products; however, during my walkthrough, I was not impressed by any innovative new technologies or products specific to industry segments.

On the other hand, I noticed technical progresses were made within some of these industry segments.  Representatives from the mounting machine vendors were excited about their capabilities with 0402 chip components.  While they did a great job of talking up the features and benefits, and explained the broad and flexible capabilities of their machines, there were not remarkable differences between the products from various vendors.  Soldering material suppliers and manufacturers also spoke about their progress since last year.  They introduced the second generation of lead-free solders and suitable machines for new materials.

There were many equipment suppliers for the screen printing and laser processes in attendance this year.  I don't know why, but, screen-printer manufacturers and screen mask vendors played up the ten microns resolutions.  The problem is no suitable materials have been developed for both etching resists and conductive paste inks. Some material suppliers claimed their "nano paste" could work for the high-resolution printing, but the material manufacturers could not provide any actual examples.....I am skeptical.

There were many, many equipment manufacturers at the exhibition who demonstrated using lasers as a versatile tool.  Not only could they drill circuit boards, but they also cut, weld, and more.  The equipment manufacturers did not produce the lasers, but rather they purchased them and designed the whole system. I was very impressed with the laser's capability to easily change from one various task to another.  Another special attraction to the laser system is a fiber laser developed as the alternative solution to the YAG laser.  Since it provides low cost equipment with lots of power, many equipment companies already introduced the new laser for use with their products.

Flexible circuit manufacturers still compete with fine line capabilities and Taiyo Industrial, a prototype shop in Japan emerged as the champion.  Taiyo featured a 15 microns pitch flexible circuits built by a semi-additive process.  Other major manufacturers bragged about their capabilities to produce similar fine lines for small volumes, but refused to produce any stating they fear educating their overseas competitors.  Once again I am skeptical......it sounds like a case of sour grapes.

Material vendors do not display any innovative or new materials at the show. Several companies designed double chambered booths for confidentiality purposes. They displayed conventional materials outside of the booths, and only serious customers (no competitors) were welcomed inside the booth to view the real new products. These companies did not want to provide any private or restricted information to their competitors. I was escorted inside the booths as a VIP, but I did not observe any innovative or new materials.

I think one of the main segments at the exhibition dealt with embedded chip components in multi-layer rigid boards or flexible circuits. A lot of circuit manufacturers displayed new embedded technologies that could manage not only passive chip components, but also semiconductor chips; in particular wafer level CSPs.  This looks in vogue. Circuit manufacturers repeatedly emphasized the technologies were developed individually, however, the basic ideas are very similar; there were not any distinguishable differences between each companies' technologies.   Dai Nippon Printing, a major PWB manufacturer in Japan, was the only manufacturer to start volume production for the embedded multi-layer circuits to a specific customer. But, I think it may take a few more years to be accepted from primary customers.  Once this happens, it will become main stream for the industry. I hope the manufacturers can survive for a few more years.

Dominique K. Numakura

DKN Research, www.dknresearch.com

Headlines of the week

(Please contact haverhill@dknreseach.com for further information of the news.)

1. Hitachi Cable (Major cable and tape circuit manufacturer in Japan) 2/1

Has agreed to acquire the tape circuit business of Casio Micronics.

2. JVC (Major electronics company in Japan) 2/4

Has agreed to sell its printed circuit business to Meiko, major PWB manufacturing company in Japan>

3. CMO (Major display manufacturer in Taiwan) 2/5

Will invest 40 billion NT$ to build a new 8.5G TFT LCD manufacturing line in Kaohsiung for the larger size TVs than 50". The new line produces 30,000 panels per month.

4. Asahi Kasei (Major chemical company in Japan) 2/6

Will increase the manufacturing capacity of dry films in China to 280 million sq meters from 180 million sq. meters for the booming demands of the markets.

5. Renesus (Major semiconductor manufacturer in Japan) 2/6

Will build a new plant in Malaysia to double the assembling capacity of the semiconductors to 1.2 billion units per month by 2009.

6. Hitachi Chemical (Major electronics materials supplier in Japan) 2/6

Will invest 2 billion yens to increase the manufacturing capacity of die bonding film to 2 million square meters for MCP(Multi Chip Package) applications.

7. Shibaura Mechatronics (Equipment vendor in Japan) 2/6

Has rolled out a new flip-chip bonding machine for COF (Chip on Film) process of driver modules of flat panel displays. The new machine has 1.4 second cycle time.

8. Toray (Major chemical company in Japan) 2/6

Has developed a new polyester base fiber material with high electrical conductivity utilizing its nano-base molecular control technologies.

9. Kurita (Equipment supplier in Japan) 2/6

Will provide the pure water supply systems to Sharp's new LCD plant in Sakai. The total budget will be over 40 billion yens for the next few years.

10. Yasukawa Denki (Major electric equipment supplier in Japan) 2/6

Has commercialized a new glass conveyor robot "MOTOMAN-CDL300D" for the 10G LCD manufacturing plants. It can manage 2850 x 3050 mm glass substrates.

11. FHP (Major display manufacturer in Japan) 2/6

Has started the volume assembling of plasma display panels and plasma TVs at the new plant in Czech Republic.

12. Tohoku Pioneer (Subsidiary of Pioneer) 2/6

Has developed a new 5.6" touch panel "GP-3300E Series" with organic EL display for out door use applications.

13. Panasonic (Major electronics company in Japan) 2/6

Will start the assembling of 32" and 37" LCD TV in Vietnam Plant for the local market. Panasonic plans to produce 50k units this year and 100k next year.

14. Sumitomo Electric (Major cable & electronics material supplier in Japan) 2/6

Has established the volume manufacturing process of the GaN substrates for larger sizes than 4" wafers.

15. Asahi Glass (Major glass material supplier in Japan) 2/5

Will invest 13 billion yens to increase the manufacturing capacities of glass cover materials of solar cells in Aichi Plant in Japan and in China Plant.

16. Mitsumi (Major component supplier in Japan) 2/8

Has commercialized a new low height switch "SOC Series". The height was reduced 73% to 0.4 mm.

Interesting literatures about the packaging industry

Articles of DKN Research

1. New "Screen Printing for High-Density Flexible Electronics", Robert Turunen, Masafumi Nakayama and Dominique Numakura, Printed Circuit FAB, October, 2007, http://pcdandm.com/cms/content/view/3846/95/

2. New "Total Process Solution for the High-Density Multi-layer Flexible Printable Electronic Circuits", (Japanese only) Dominique Numakura, Denshi Zairyo, October, 2007

3.New "The latest electronics package, Part XXXI, Cellular Phones", Dominique Numakura, Electronics Packaging Technology, October, 2007 

4. New "Coombs' Printed Circuits Handbook, 6th Edition, Part 15-Flexible Circuits", Dominique Numakura, McGraw Hill, New York, September, 2007

5. New "DKN Research Develops Film Base Connector", Circuits Assembly, September, 2007.

6. "Flexible Circuit Materials", (Japanese only) Dominique Numakura, Denshi Zairyo, April, 2007

7. "Business Trends and Technology Trends of the HDI Flexible Circuits -

Roadmap for the Ultra High-Density Advanced Flexible Circuits", Dominique Numakura, KPCA, October 31, 2006

From the Major Industry Magazines

1. "Embedded Active Technologies for Convergent Microelectronic Systems", Baik-Woo Lee, Chong K. Yoon, Venky Sundaram, Mahadevan Iyer and Rao R. Tummala, CircuiTree, January, 2008.

2. "Flux Selection for Lead-Free Wave Soldering", Douglas Watson, Jasbir Bath and Pan Wei Chih, Circuits Assembly, January, 2008.

3. "Evaluating Cleaning System Performance", Steve Stach and Mike Bixenman, SMT, December, 2007

4. "Designing to Improve PTH Reliability", Kathy Zulki Khan, Printed Circuit Design & FAB, January, 2008.

5. "Thick Copper Pillar Bump Fabrication", W.W. Flack, H Nguyen, E. Capsuto and C. McEwen, Advanced Packaging, November/December, 2007

7. "Under the Hood, Efficiency vs. Speed", presented by EE Times and Techonline, October 8, 2007