Ziptronix bonds with Sony on image sensors
Ziptronix was spun out from North Carolina’s RTI International in October 2000 to commercialize their wafer and die bonding (ZiBond) and bonding with interconnect (DBI) technologies.
“We believe that Ziptronix’s patented oxide bonding technology enables the industry’s lowest distortion for imaging systems utilizing backside illumination” said Dan Donabedian, CEO of Ziptronix, Inc. “The result is that pixels can be scaled smaller, resulting in more die per wafer. Users of ZiBond technology benefit because yields are dramatically improved and production costs reduced.”
“Our patented bonding technology revolutionizes how light is received in imaging sensors. This is critically important for backside illumination applications,” said Donabedian. “The market for image sensing products is expected to exceed $16 billion cumulative over the next four years.”
Ziptronix’ patent portfolio includes 100 worldwide issued patents related to direct bond and 3-D device, circuit, integration, packaging and encapsulation technologies. In 2007 Raytheon Vision Systems demonstrated the feasibility of Ziptronix three-dimension (3-D) interconnect technology to be compatible with multilayer CMOS IC processes, according to the company.
Demonstration of the compatibility involved the 3-D integration of a five-layer metal, 0.5-micron CMOS device with silicon PIN detector devices. The Ziptronix DBI interconnect technology supports an interconnect pitch of less than 10 microns, with typical interconnect width of 2 micron and alignment accuracy of 1 micron.
The proprietary ZiBond process was a breakthrough in that using a very thin layer of dielectric facilitated direct bonding of multiple materials in previously impossible combinations, according to Ziptronix.Since the bonding process occurs at low temperature, there are no residual stresses, which can occur with thermal or anodic bonding methods.
The resulting bond strength typically exceeds the fracture strength of the bonded bulk materials. Ziptronix’ Direct Bond Interconnect technology builds off the low temperature oxide bonding technology and adds conducting metal interconnects which enables silicon to be bonded in a 3-D fashion to maximize the density of signal paths between chips that are used to interconnect transistors.
DBI maximizes the electrical connections between the separate components which extends bandwidth by alleviating the interconnect delays with scalable 3-D routing.
Ziptronix has received approximately $45 million in investments from three sources: Intersouth, which manages $780M in seven venture capital limited partnerships; Grotech, which has managed over $1 billion in capital and funded more that 100 companies since its inception in 1984; and RTI International, a independent-nonprofit R&D organization with $900M in revenues.Sony will be detailing its imaging sensor technology at the upcoming IEDM in December.
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