The drivers of the semiconductor market have transitioned from a focus on PCs to mobile and now to a data centric “digitalization of everything”, where we are seeing an increasingly diverse end market. While the front-end roadmap is still progressing thanks to EUV lithography and other process technology innovations, it’s no longer sufficient to keep pace with the demand of the new digital society. Different kinds of semiconductor innovation are required to support a diversified end market.

For data center applications, we have seen an acceleration of technical innovations in IC packaging and IC substrates to complement front end wafer fabrication technologies and meet performance, power, and cost requirements.

Heterogeneous integration is actively being implemented with several new 2.5 and 3D architectures, where many integrations are utilizing advanced IC substrates. With interconnect geometry scaling, we see the need and the opportunity to bridge process equipment and process control methodologies across the three worlds of front end, packaging, and substrates.

KLA is partnering with key industry players to bridge these three worlds and this presentation will show the challenges we are facing and problems we are solving to advance the semiconductor technology roadmap for advanced applications like data center.

Similarly, the automotive industry is also experiencing semiconductor innovation as it continues its secular shift towards more electrification, computing, and automation. The introduction of wide bandgap (WBG) materials, like silicon carbide (SiC), have proven to be essential to the proliferation of electric vehicles because of their improved power efficiency over silicon.

WBG power manufacturers are facing significant yield challenges while ramping production to meet industry’s skyrocketing demand. Low yield is impacting both fabrication costs and product reliability and can pose a serious threat to the EV adoption in the market.

This presentation with step through the manufacturing process for SiC power devices to highlight key challenges. From the substrate and epitaxy processes, through device fabrication, wafer singulation, packaging and final test, there are opportunities for optimized processes, advanced process control and inline screening methodologies to improve both reliability and yield.

Keywords: Innovation, Advanced Packaging, Technology Roadmap, Heterogeneous Integration, Substrates, Electrification, Yield, Reliability, Inline Screening, Silicon Carbide