SBIR Phase II: Manufacturing of Package Test Socket Contactors through Innovations in Electrochemical Printing

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project addresses the low volume manufacturing of test probe cards through Electrochemical Printing. Integrated Circuit Board Testing Connectors(ICBTCs) include contactors that are metal structures designed to contact integrated circuit boards (ICBs) at the wafer level during production with wafer probe cards (WPCs) or after packaging with package testing sockets (PTSs). WPC contactors are manufactured with semiconductor processes (SPs) in high volume whereas PTS contactors are built in lower volume with conventional microfabrication (CM) or low cost plating through dryfilm masks on flexible substrates. There is increasing pressure to reduce the ICB package size and PTS contactor dimensions while also reducing testing costs. This project addresses these needs by developing a moderate cost, high resolution electrochemical printing technology. The broader impacts of this research include providing repair solutions for high value products that are currently thrown away and reducing plating bath inventory in an electrodeposition tool by at least 10X. The long term opportunity is for EcP is to revolutionize desktop microfabrication because it is a low cost, single step process that has promise of producing complex 3D fully functional polymer, semi-conductor, and metal parts.