Nordson: Protecting Yield as Packaging Complexity Grows

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

As AI and high-performance computing push advanced packaging toward greater complexity, manufacturers must expand capacity while protecting yield on increasingly valuable assemblies. At SEMICON West, Nordson Electronic Solutions’ Jeanine Norlin, senior manager of marketing, and Liam Thorp, product line manager, discuss how the company is addressing those demands through plasma surface treatment and precision dispensing. They explain how plasma improves wettability and underfill flow, how the ASYMTEK Vantage XL handles large-panel warpage, and why coordinated process expertise across Nordson’s businesses is becoming more important for manufacturing reliability.

Marcy LaRont: Jeanine and Liam, please share a little about your backgrounds and your roles at Nordson.

Jeanine Norlin: As the senior manager of marketing for Nordson Electronics Solutions, I'm responsible for connecting customer demand to our product value propositions and helping translate evolving requirements of high-reliability electronics manufacturing into clear stories of our customer-focused solutions. My background includes more than 20 years of marketing leadership roles across multiple industries with a focus on highly technical products and complex buying processes.

Our division encompasses our entire portfolio of electronics processing solutions. That includes our ASYMTEK precision dispensing and conformal coating products. In addition, within our division portfolio, we have our MARCH Plasma products for surface treatment and cleaning. We also have our SELECT selective soldering solutions for high throughput, selective soldering, and advanced selective soldering applications.

Liam Thorp: My background is in mechanical engineering. I actually came from the automotive world. As a product line manager for our Vantage dispensing line, I work on our valves, jets, spares, and Canvas software.

In that capacity, I'm providing technical assistance in the field to really understand the market trends and customer needs. I use that information for new product development. We want to ensure that when we see changes in the market, we can make the necessary adjustments.

LaRont: Was moving from automotive into this role a natural transition, or was it very different?

Thorp: I'm fortunate to have worked in electric vehicles, which was very interesting. I worked as a design and release engineer, so I did similar work but from the other end, from OEM to supplier. Now, I have the opposite role. I'm interfacing with my former self, so to speak.

LaRont: Nordson works with semiconductors, as well as PCB and SMT providers. As those worlds come together, we're constantly hearing about how AI and high-performance computing are driving every aspect of our lives. Considering this, which of your customers’ manufacturing challenges are you most concerned with?

Thorp: One of the biggest customer concerns is capacity. They need to meet the demand they're seeing in the market, and we need to support them in doing so.

But as the need for capacity grows, so too does the tremendous complexity of what they are building. Chips, memory, and other components of the system are evolving at an extremely rapid pace. So, our customers are looking for partners that can support both the existing demand and where the technology is going, and be in a position to support them even as the specifics change.

Because of the complexity of advanced packaging products, our customers are looking for even greater reliability from their partners. By the time it reaches the final back-end stage of the advanced packaging process, you're talking about a very expensive creation. So, they're looking for partners that can provide the solutions they need, at scale, and work with them as variables change.

LaRont: Regarding surface preparation of panels and wafers, why is plasma surface preparation becoming more critical in advanced packaging? What about that can be problematic, and what does MARCH Exosphere bring to the processing of large panels and wafers in that equation?

Thorp: From a process standpoint, an obvious advantage of plasma treatment is very clean boards. But plasma treatment also improves the wettability of a board, which can reduce process time by 10–20% because you spend less time waiting for flow-out. When we're talking about boards on machines as large as our Vantage XL, up to 610 x 616, that is a substantial savings in the process time it takes the underfill to flow out.

LaRont: That's a significant reduction in cycle time.

Norlin: It goes back to what we were just discussing about how our customers cannot afford any scrap at all in this high-stakes advanced packaging environment. In the past, I think many customers looked at plasma surface treatment as a “nice-to-have.” Now, it is a must-have.

LaRont: That's a recurring theme across the tech stack. The more “secondary” processes in hardware manufacturing are getting more attention than ever before. Their importance has been elevated.

Let’s shift focus to the ASYMTEK Vantage XL I’m sitting next to. When moving from wafers to large panels that introduce warpage, temperature variation, and alignment challenges, how does the ASYMTEK Vantage XL maintain dispensing accuracy across the panel, particularly when applying underfill? What is the technology behind its dispensing accuracy?

Thorp: The Vantage XL has its name for a reason. It leverages the excellent performance we already achieve on our Vantage platform, effectively scaled for a large panel. We're still using linear motors. We're still using magnetic drive systems that allow the machine a very high wet placement accuracy and repeatability. We use multiple heads to improve our throughput, and all of this comes together to form the core of the Vantage product family.

The tooling itself is where XL really steps into a unique space supporting large panels. We use a very carefully tuned clamping system along the board edges, something that would be quite hard to do on a wafer, but is much easier on a square panel, to secure and align to our tooling before we pull a vacuum to reduce our warpage and secure the part to the chuck prior to processing. Then we release, disengage the clamping entirely, and remove it from the dispensing space.

LaRont: The vacuum is holding the large panel flat in its entirety?

Thorp: Yes, as flat as we can pull, and then we're able to operate our dispense process. When we go to disengage, we reintroduce the clamps to avoid any shocks or disruptions. We very carefully unload the board, and then the clamps retract again, and we're ready for an end effector to come and extract the panel.

LaRont: Is the clamping system unique to the larger form factor?

Thorp: Yes, it’s something that we've used to address warpage concerns in larger panels. When we're talking about wafers, we can pull a pretty strong vacuum without risk to the wafer and handle warpage effectively. But when we're talking about 510 x 515 or 600 x 600 panels, the warpage is substantial. We needed extra support to get the vacuum in the perfect condition to secure the part prior to releasing those clamps.

LaRont: We talk a lot about system-level integration. How can manufacturers use Nordson’s dispensing, plasma treatment, and inspection technologies together to improve process and yield?

Norlin: It is a universal commitment from all Nordson divisions to understand exactly what it is like for the customer, in a fab and on the floor, to ensure that all our systems within each specific area are addressing a pain point.

As far as our technology, a common denominator across all divisions within Nordson, and therefore all of our product portfolio, is a deep commitment to accuracy, reliability, and best-in-class solutions, which are not based solely on the specific machine and its functionality, but also our software and how everything works together.

This is how we pursue product solutions. Customers know they'll get that cohesive experience across all our machines and divisions. When you talk about advanced packaging, regardless of the specific solution, we're just very proud that Nordson has best-in-class solutions that span the value chain.

Thorp: Nordson is such a strong supplier partner because each of our divisions is truly expert in their area of the value chain. Our test and inspection experts are amazing. We are experts in our dispensing, in plasma treatment, conformal coating, and selective soldering. When you bring it all together, we are able to provide tremendous expertise and high level solutions to our customers in all that we do.

LaRont: That’s a great place to end. Liam and Jeanine, thank you so much.