Onto Innovation Announces Opening of Packaging Applications Center of Excellence

Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE: ONTO) today announced the opening of the company’s Packaging Applications Center of Excellence (PACE), a first-of-its-kind facility in the U.S. dedicated to panel-level packaging (PLP) innovations enabling 2.5D and 3D chiplet architectures and AI packages. Collaborating partners represent key process steps across the supply chain, ranging from panel package and IC substrate manufacturers to process equipment and material suppliers. Collaborators include: ASMPT, Corning, Evatec, Lam Research, LPKF Laser & Electronics SE, MKS Instruments, Resonac Corporation, Taiyo Ink Mfg. Co., Ltd., and multiple others.

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Onto Innovation’s Packaging Applications Center of Excellence (PACE) will accelerate panel-level packaging R&D — enabling the most advanced heterogeneous integration for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, bringing industry leaders in substrate manufacturing, process equipment, and materials together, working toward a common goal. (Photo: Business Wire)

At PACE, Onto and its collaborators will use their expert knowledge of lithography, plating, thin film deposition, laser processes for through glass via (TGV) formation, and new material developments in photoresist, dielectric and plating chemistry to work toward sub-1.5µm line/space panel interconnects. In addition, PACE participants will explore novel organic damascene process innovations for maintaining proper interconnect line widths, a critical requirement as the line/space feature size shrinks, in an effort to replace the conventional semi-additive process for advanced IC substrates.

To ensure yields for these increasingly fine interconnects, the PACE collaboration team will also focus on process control technologies like Onto’s Firefly G3 system. With glass core substrates being the next technology inflection, the Firefly G3 system is designed to address new inspection and metrology challenges associated with transparent panels, such as detecting missing TGVs and performing TGV critical dimension measurements across the entire panel.

“With the need for finer, denser interconnects and larger package sizes to support new AI and chiplet architectures, customers and collaborators need to accelerate their technology roadmaps and shorten the time to market,” says Mike Plisinski, chief executive officer of Onto Innovation. “Together, we will develop new panel-level packaging solutions in support of glass core substrates and the rapidly evolving AI landscape.”