Fast flip chip assembly for reel-to-reel manufacturing

For low-cost applications like smart labels, a mounting technology, which allows high throughput is necessary. Therefore, such products are fabricated reel-to-reel on flexible substrates. With this technology, cheap substrate materials can be used and substrate handling is reduced to a minimum, but to achieve fast production cycles it is important to establish rapid and efficient mounting technologies. Flip chip assembly using anisotropic conductive adhesive (ACA) offers an inexpensive method interconnecting many contacts simultaneously, but mounting speed is limited by the fact that a defined pressure has to be maintained during curing. For chips with only a few contacts, alternative methods which allow higher throughput are investigated.