Substrate Trench Pedestals for Defect-Tolerant Hybrid Bonding
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Solution Overview
Problem
Surface defects on component wafers, such as foreign materials and edge chipping, lead to significant yield loss in hybrid bonding of integrated circuit (IC) dies due to bonding defects that can be 100 times larger than the defects themselves, posing challenges for manufacturing equipment and metrology, especially with tighter pitch designs.
Innovation Solution
Creating a recessed trench on the substrate surface to accommodate surface defects, allowing the IC die to overhang and ensuring a gap between the edge of the die and the substrate, thereby preventing interference and enabling flush contact for improved bonding resilience.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If surface defects are present on component wafers, then manufacturing is simpler, but bonding yield and quality deteriorate significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts surface defects from the bonding interface by creating a recessed trench that physically separates defects from the critical bonding area. The trench removes the harmful interaction between surface defects and the bonding interface, allowing defects to exist on the wafer without compromising bonding yield or quality.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent converts the presence of surface defects, which are normally harmful, into a manageable condition by designing a structure where defects can reside in the recessed trench area without interfering with bonding. This allows manufacturing to proceed with less stringent defect requirements while maintaining high bonding yield.
2Area of moving object
If tighter pitch designs are used, then device density increases, but the impact of surface defects is amplified leading to lower yields
Solution Approach 1:
By extracting surface defects from the bonding interface through the recessed trench structure, the patent enables tighter pitch designs to proceed without the amplified defect impact that would otherwise occur. The trench isolates defects from the high-density bonding areas.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies local quality by creating a specific structural modification (recessed trench) at the bonding interface area, which locally changes the topography to accommodate defects while maintaining high device density in the bonding regions.
3Reliability
If a recessed trench is created on the substrate surface, then resilience to surface defects improves, but manufacturing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The recessed trench is created as a preliminary structural feature before the bonding process. This pre-established structure proactively prepares the substrate to accommodate and isolate surface defects, ensuring bonding resilience is built into the design rather than added as a corrective measure.
4Ease of manufacture
If surface defects are present, then manufacturing is easier, but achieving planar joining becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts surface defects from the bonding interface by placing them in the recessed trench area. This separation allows the bonding surfaces to achieve planar joining even when defects are present on the wafer, maintaining manufacturing precision without requiring defect-free starting material.
Data Source
AI summary
Bonding pedestals on substrates, and their manufacture, for direct bonding integrated circuit (IC) dies onto substrates. The electrical interconnections of one or more IC dies and a substrate are bonded together with the IC dies on and overhanging the pedestals. A bonding pedestal may be formed by etching down the substrate around the interconnections. A system may include one or more such pedestals above and adjacent a recessed surface on a substrate with IC dies overhanging the pedestals. Such a system may be coupled to a host component, such as a board, and a power supply via the host component.