Not Available

As flip-chip bonding becomes the predominant standard in the electronics industry, the increased proximity between dice surfaces and packaging materials will require a significant reduction in the latter's alpha particle activity in order to avoid soft errors. Emission rates at or below 0.001 a/cm2/hr are desirable, which is well below the 0.0050 a/cm2/hr capability of today's best detectors. We have developed an active background suppression scheme that dramatically improves the performance of a gas-filled parallel plate chamber, yielding a sensitivity of 0.00017 a/cm2/hr. In Phase 2, we propose to design and build a prototype commercial detector using this scheme to achieve a sensitivity of 0.00005-0.0001 a/cm2/hr. To achieve this goal, we will improve both our background suppression scheme and the instrumentation on the detector. Phase 3 development would then be carried out at XIA to produce a marketable commercial detector.