An Automated, High-throughput Acid Etcher for Die Extraction and Reassembly

The breakneck speed of technological advances in the area of microelectronics presents significant challenges to many legacy and current aircraft and space systems as Integrated Circuits (ICs) quickly become outdated and/or are not available in the required packaging for maintenance of aircraft. One way to address this problem is with Die Extraction and Reassembly (DER). However, current DER processes require substantial human involvement and typically only one IC can be processed at a time. The high cost of the IC extraction process is an added concern due to the cost of the red fuming nitric acid used in the acid etching process. The most state-of-the-art acid etch systems have tried to reduce the acid consumption as a cost-effective and environmentally friendly approach, but at the cost of processing time. Here, Spectral Energies proposes to develop a rapid and high throughput acid etch system for multiple IC die extraction simultaneously. Our system will have means to filter and reuse the acid which maintains the cost-effectiveness and environmentally friendly advantages while maintaining processing speed. The high-throughput acid etcher will be coupled with our high-throughput laser decapping system. The combination of these two systems will provide a highly-automated and high-throughput DER process.