Infineon Technologies is phasing out wirebonding for its chip cards in favor of its proprietary FCOS (flip chip-on-substrate) technology, which it is ramping up at its packaging plant in Regensburg, Germany.

"This year we will have 30 percent of our modules in FCOS and, in the next four to five years we expect to discontinue wirebond completely," said Peter Stampka, director of Infineon's packaging center.

Flip chip technology, which means mounting the chip face down, with the active surface on the substrate, allows the packaging process to dispense with wires and synthetic resin encapsulation.

Getting rid of the wiring saves space, allowing a bigger chip to be used (maximum 5mm by 6mm as opposed to a maximum 1.9mm by 1.9mm for wirebonding), which means the IC can have more functionality, the company said.

It also means a smaller module can be used -- e.g. for SIM cards in phones -- an approach which is being pursued by the European Telecoms Standards Institute (ETSI).

Flip chip technology has been around for 20 years, but has not been used before on a flexible tape for mounting on cards.

Infineon is introducing FCOS in every plant where it puts chips into cards. It has already produced 70 million FCOS telephone card modules in Mexico, and claims to have the same level of yield on FCOS as on wirebond.

The company developed FCOS in partnership with the banknote and chip card company Giesecke & Devrient.

Infineon reckons it has 41 percent of the ICs used in chip cards when measured in dollars, and over 50 per cent measured in volume.

By: DocMemory
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