Applied Materials, Inc. and BE Semiconductor Industries N.V. (Besi) announced an expansion of their longstanding strategic partnership, with Besi joining Applied's EPIC Center as an Innovation Partner. The collaboration builds on the companies’ joint development program launched in 2020 and extends co-innovation beyond hybrid bonding into new interconnect architectures and applications supporting the semiconductor industry's AI-driven scaling roadmap.
As the AI infrastructure build-out drives demand for higher-density, higher-bandwidth chip-to-chip and chip-to-package interconnects, the expanded partnership is intended to give mutual customers earlier access to co-optimized process and assembly solutions spanning the full advanced packaging flow – from wafer-level hybrid bonding through panel-scale integration.
In 2020, Applied and Besi established a joint Center of Excellence at Applied's Advanced Packaging Development Center in Singapore, combining Applied's process expertise in etch, planarization, deposition, wafer cleaning, metrology, inspection and particle defect control with Besi's die placement, interconnect and assembly technology. That collaboration resulted in Kinex™, the industry’s first integrated die-to-wafer hybrid bonding system.
“Besi has been a trusted partner since we began co-developing next-generation hybrid bonding solutions,” said Gary Dickerson, President and CEO of Applied Materials. “With Besi joining EPIC as an Innovation Partner, we’re extending that collaboration across the interconnect technologies our customers need to scale AI systems. Bringing this work into Applied's EPIC Center gives both companies earlier visibility into where the roadmap is headed and lets us co-optimize the full packaging flow.”
“Our center of excellence with Applied in Singapore has been foundational to Besi's hybrid bonding roadmap,” said Richard Blickman, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Management of Besi. “Joining Applied's EPIC Center as an Innovation Partner is a natural next step, giving us a seat alongside the leading logic, memory and systems companies as we advance TCB scaling, die-on-panel integration and the interconnect technologies that will define the next generation of AI and photonics systems”
As an Innovation Partner, Besi engineers will work alongside Applied's teams at the EPIC Center to accelerate joint development across a broader set of interconnect and integration technologies. While advanced packaging was historically treated as a back-end assembly step, technologies such as hybrid bonding and panel-level integration now depend on the same materials engineering disciplines that define front-end wafer fabrication.
“Advanced packaging is no longer a back-end assembly step – it is a materials engineering challenge that demands the same precision and cleanliness as front-end wafer fabrication,” said Dr. Prabu Raja, President of the Semiconductor Products Group at Applied Materials. “Developing these technologies together with Besi engineers in a front-end R&D environment like the EPIC Center will allow us to treat them as one connected flow rather than a series of isolated steps. That gives our mutual customers earlier access to co-optimized solutions and a faster path from development to high-volume manufacturing.”
The expanded scope of collaboration will focus on next-generation 3D IC scaling and logic and memory integration for AI compute and memory architectures, with expected R&D programs to include:
- New platforms for die-to-wafer hybrid bonding, building on the companies' existing Singapore Center of Excellence
- Scaling of thermo-compression bonding (TCB) and its surrounding process ecosystem
- New die-on-wafer, die-on-die and die-on-panel integration platforms
- Photonics-enabled interconnect applications supporting co-packaged optics and AI system scaling
Applied’s new, $5 billion* EPIC (Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization) Center in Silicon Valley represents the largest-ever U.S. investment in advanced semiconductor equipment and process technology R&D. The center, which will be operationally ready this year, is designed from the ground up to dramatically reduce the time it takes to commercialize breakthrough technologies from early-stage research to full-scale manufacturing.
