From chemical building blocks of polymers to microelectronics reliability

Among various materials, polymers are widely used in microelectronics as different product constituents, such as encapsulants, conductive or non-conductive adhesives, underfills, molding compounds, insulators, dielectrics, and coatings. The behavior of these polymer constituents determines the performance, such as functionality and reliability, of the final products. Therefore, the successful development of microelectronics depends on, to some extent, the optimal design and processing of polymer materials. Due to the development trends of microelectronics, characterized mainly by ongoing miniaturization down to the nano scale, technology and functionality integration, eco-designing, shorter-time-to-market, development and application of polymers become one of the bottlenecks for the microelectronic industry. Aiming at optimizing the product/process development, much effort is directed to understanding and designing polymer behavior in microelectronics, such as in material pre-selection, processing, characterization and modeling. Although these efforts are necessary, the ultimate benefits can only be realized if the relationship between chemistry and the behavior can be understood and predicted. This paper presents some results of our effort to establish the links between chemical details of the polymers and microelectronics reliability.